Update 16/6

Right, the plan for today is to earn money.

The last two days I've spent arranging things by phone and email and I've earnt barely any money. I need to put my head down and power through some work so I can get billing asap. I may not get the money this month, but will have it there for next month's bills.

Today is a No Spend Day (NSD). Hopefully that should be pretty easy to achieve. At some point over the next few days I'm going to start undertaking some challenges such as a Grocery Challenge, Clothing Challenge and a Utilities Challenge.

Grocery Challenge
At the moment we are spending about £100 a month in food and household items, and that has to continue so for June the Grocery Challenge is to stick to £100.


I used to keep a tally of cat food in with our grocery budget, but realised that we have no real control over this so have removed it. It adds up to about £35 a month to feed them. Two of them eat tinned Kitekat and the third is a senior now and has developed a sensitivity to normal tinned food so we've had to switch her to senior pouches. If we can get this on offers, fine. If not, we don't skimp and try and save money.

We cannot alter the brand they eat to save money, as previous attempts have resulted in uneaten food lying down for days and complaints from neighbours that they are stealing food from them. What we have done is found a cheaper brand they will eat and stopped feeding them ad lib as they were putting on too much weight.

Clothing Challenge
This actually won't be so hard as I don't spend much money on clothing. Martin bought me an shift dress for interviews a few months ago and I intend to team that with items and use that for my new job. I have enough clothing in my wardrobe to mix and match if necessary and my mother keeps giving me bagfulls of stuff every now and then when she has a clear out.

So the challenge is to not spend any money on clothes this month.

The only thing we really need is new socks for hubby, but I sat down last and darned all the holes in his socks to try and keep them going a bit longer. I also have holes in my Levi jeans, which are on the inside leg seam of the thighs so i need to look into patching that, and a hole in the elbow of one of my jumpers so somehting has to be done about that.

Thank God for old books about sewing. I have a 1935 copy of The Art of Needlecraft by Polkinghorne and that has a great section of darning and repairing clothes.

Utilities Challenge

Our last gas bill was shocking. Part of that was the usual winter heating bill, but part of it is my range so I have to find ways to cut down the amount of gas used for cooking. I used to read the meters about a year ago but got out of the habit. I know in the winter we use about 10kwh a day. When we had the range out of action for three months one winter that dropped to 3.5kwh a day, yet the electric bill only rose by £25 over this period. part of that is because I used electrically-efficient gadgets to cook with - the slow cooker and the microwave.

The challenge for the next seven days is to a) read my electric and gas meters every day to get an idea of how much we use and b) have two 'gas-free' cooking days. I'm also going to look at switching our gas account to someone cheaper.

As for water, we are already in credit with the water company to the tune of about £27. I'm very frugal with water in the garden and use water butts a lot. Also we tend to have a quick shower every other day and have a bath only about once a week. My washing machine is new and very efficient, plus I have a dishwasher that helps me cut down the amount of water I use. I would like to look at using rainwater to flush our toilets with, as I really object to using drinking water to flush them. A lot of people don't understand that - they think there is a separate supply for drinking water, but in reality it all comes in from the street through one pipe.