Miss Thrifty

For one reason and another I’ve ended up with nine wooden chopping boards, which works out at four-and-a-half chopping boards per member of my household. I only went out and bought one of them (the first one) but I’m a kitchenware geek - and the people who buy me presents know the way to my heart.

I doubt I’ll ever need to buy another chopping board as long as I live, because all my boards are in tip-top condition. This is what I have learned: (more…)

Hey! My post about our forthcoming Thrifty Roadtrip has just made Editor’s Pick at the 35th Money Hacks Carnival!

Thanks to My Two Dollars for organising a great carnival this week, with lots of pictures of steam trains. You can’t go wrong with the Old West.

Also in the carnival: I really enjoyed Lisa at Condo Blues’ post about budget-friendly household cleaners. Lots of white vinegar, baking soda - and crystal clear instructions on cleaning floors, counters and dishes. This tip was new on me:

Vinegar in the Jet Dry container of the dishwasher. Vinegar works to keep spots off the glasses just like Jet Dry, Cascade, or a store brand-sheeting agent. Actually, I think vinegar has better sheeting action and keeps water spots from forming on my glasses. Who knew?

Yes, I know I’m really late to the party. I’d read all about Freecycle, which reduces waste by encouraging people to post their unwanted items online, and pass them on. But I hadn’t really paid much attention, because (a) Freecycle always popping up in those same rubbish “recessionista” features in the women’s pages. You know: those round-ups that tell us all to go out and stuff fallen fruit into our Lulu Guinness handbags, and take our clothes to “swap parties”. Also, (b) I’d presumed that Freecycle’s domains were eco-trendy places like Islington and Brighton, rather than my creaky Yorkshire backwater.

But lo! I looked Freecycle up, and it turns out that the little place in which I live (pop: 13,000) has its own, thriving Freecycle group. (more…)

Doesn’t this book look marvellous?

Make Do And Mend was published in the UK in 1943, by the Ministry of Information, at a time when food and clothes were rationed. Every British citizen was permitted one egg a week, a modest cube of cheese and unlimited bread and vegetables. Coupons for clothes were cut from allowance books; enterprising women supplemented these rations with garments cut from curtains, and kohl pencil lines up the backs of their legs, to look like stockings. Their cookware was handed over to be turned into fusiland turned into aeroplanes. (And if all this wasn’t bad enough, their towns and cities were being bombed at night.)  

This frugal tradition continued beyond the Second World War and into the 1950s, when the Manchester Evening News published Take a Tip : a collection of readers’ money saving titbits.

It’s funny, isn’t it? These little booklets have been hanging around for decades, unwanted and unread, gathering dust in attics and mouldering on charity shop shelves while we’ve been out spending and splurging on overpriced frivolites and cheap tat.

Now that we’re headed for a recession - a Depression, even, if the doomiest of the doom-mongers are to be believed - all these pearls of wisdom are suddenly relevant again. With our financial indexes plummeting, our markets in turmoil and our elected representatives banging heads with one another, this seems as good a time as any to revisit some of our forebears’ handiest household hints.

Here are some of my favourites: (more…)