Miss Thrifty

IKEA sucks? According to the latest news reports, our long-standing love affair with the adored bastion of low-priced, Swedish furniture could be coming to an end.

Here’s The Mail on Sunday:

A weakening financial performance, missed store targets, planning headaches and enticing overtures from homegrown retail chains have all bruised Ikea.

And according to deeper analysis of its figures, the retailer cannot rest the blame solely on a weak economy…The retailer’s profitability has fallen away every year since 2004 in the UK, and with the exception of a bumper sales year in 2007 at the peak of the spending boom the amount we have handed over in each store has followed a similar trajectory.

The newspaper points to new ranges and cut-priced homeware initiatives from other retailers such as T.K. Maxx and Argos. It also suggests that with interest rates and mortgage repayments as low as they are, people are “banding up” when it comes to replacing cheap household products and furniture bought during the boom.

Fair enough. What I find most interesting of all, however, are the comments left by the readers. They have their own, very strong opinions about why they won’t be returning to IKEA. (more…)

Miss Thrifty reader Felicity Hall, a needlepoint queen and purveyor of hot-to-trot needlepoint kits,  got in touch to let me know that she has started to upload a wealth of free patterns to her new website. You can copy and print the patterns – and if you have any problems, Felicity will e-mail you copies as PDFs, which seems jolly nice.

The first pattern is a Christmas ornament (pictured), with other patterns to follow.

I’d love to have the time to do something like this. Right now it is very busy at work and I can barely find time to iron a pillowcase, let alone stitch a pretty project like this in an idyllic, domestic heaven-themed daze.  In the meantime I can dream on, I guess!

Next time your cooker, fridge, lawnmower or washing machine breaks, don’t buy a new one. Buy a spare part, and fit it yourself.

We did this a while back, when our fan-assisted oven became a fan-unassisted oven. We couldn’t get the oven hot enough for cooking; this is what happens, when you buy a house with a kitchen straight out of a DIY shop bargain bin. We thought we’d have to pay someone to come and replace the fan element, or buy a new cooker and have someone come and fit that. Both options were disgustingly expensive.

Here in our cushioned First World, we are accustomed to a disposable culture: buying up cheap things, then buying up another batch of cheap things when the first lot fall to pieces. To some extent, however, the recession has put paid to this mindset. Our next door neighbour Colin, a TV repairman, is a good barometer for this. Two years ago he was complaining, bitterly, that people were binning their sturdy old goggle boxes for junky flatscreen jobs; these days, he is once again rushed off his feet with TV repair work. (more…)

Would you like some free photos? Miss Thrifty reader Amy pointed me in the direction of a website called Free Photo Printing – 455 Free Photo Prints, which does what it says on the tin.

Many of the photo developers – Truprint, Boots, Jessops et al – offer sets of free prints for new online customers. You just have to pay the postage (usually around the £1 mark). This site lists all the companies, the numbers of free prints available from each one and the postage costs.

The links take you to the companies’ homepages, which can be a little annoying because you have to click around, but it’s certainly a site to bookmark.

The best offer right now is Jessops‘: 40 prints  (6″ by 4″) and 99p postage. You also get a voucher for £6 off their fancy photo paper photobooks.

Actually, if you are on the hunt for thrifty Christmas gifts, Jessops have got a couple of good offers at the moment. Until 23 November 2009, you can get 20 per cent off their personalised photo calendars.

Thanks Amy!

Image credit: tick followed tock.

A nice television lady called Katy asked if I knew anyone who fitted the bill for her production company’s new programme idea. She is looking for people who spend just £1 or £2 a day. I  said I’d put the word out* if Katy sent over her brief. And she did:

Do you lead the ultimate thrifty lifestyle? Is living off £1 a day second nature to you rather than a challenge?

If so, then Hotbed Media are keen to speak with people living the ultimate thrifty lifestyle. We want to talk to people whose budgets only allow them to spend no more than a couple of pounds per day because they believe in this lifestyle. We also want to hear from people who have enjoyed this frugal way of life for many years.

We are filming a taster tape on Wednesday 18th November 2009 and we’d like our presenter to spend a few hours with a person who lives on a few pounds a day. THIS IS NOT FOR TV – it’s for our development and researching purposes only. All footage we film will not be broadcast.

If you’re currently living the thrifty life, then please get in touch and speak to one of our team on T: 0121 248 3900 or email: development@hotbedmedia.co.uk
*I’m quite happy to do this when someone sends me a personalised request and is nice. I know this sounds like a no-brainer but seriously, you should see my inbox!

Thanks to all who entered the competition to win a copy of On The Plot With ‘Dirty Nails’. The winner is after the jump…

Thanks too for all the great tips, which are going to prove very useful in the months to come. Here are some of my favourites:

Cut the bottom off a 2 litre pop bottle and use it as a mini-cloche (Kelly).

Save your old, laddered tights, cut them into strips and use them to tie up tomatoes, beans etc onto poles. They stretch much better than string and don’t cut into the stems as they grow (Claire).

Sow sweet peas and climbing beans inside the cardboard cylinders from loo rolls. Pack them into a recycled mushroom box and fill with compost. Any roots that grow through the tube grow safely in the surrounding compost, which makes them so easy to transplant (Lottie).

Buy organic seeds – you can then save the seeds to plant out the next year. Try to swap seeds and growing tips with friends and neighbours – it is worth knowing which varieties perform well in your local soil and growing conditions. In addition to the other comment about loo rolls, the middle of kitchen rolls or Pringle containers are great to grow leeks in (Andy Sowden). (more…)

If, like me, you like growing your own vegetables but you are no Bunny Guinness, this little book is something of a godsend.

Why? Well, it is jam-packed with handy hints, which is good. But what makes this book great is that it spells out all the bits and bobs that you should be doing in the garden, on a week-by-week basis. It’s a bossy book!

For this reason I am grateful to the publisher who sent it to me, and hopeful that On The Plot With ‘Dirty Nails’ could be the missing link between my vegetable garden that exists in my head, and my vegetable garden that exists in real life. In my head: I stoop over a raised bed of lush vegetation, deciding which scrumptious fruits and vegetables will be going into my salad. THERE ARE NO SLUGS. My vegetable garden in reality, right now: a post-apocalyptic scenario featuring bare earth, howling wind and a few dead tomato and sweetcorn plants that I haven’t yet gotten round to composting. Help, please!

Would you like to win a copy? See below…

In the meantime, here are a couple of extracts from Dirty Nails’ advice and instructions for November Week 1:

(more…)