I'm still subscribed to what?! Taking account of it all..

 Month 2 - Bite 3

Next to tackle the accounts. I've made a list of the accounts I hold and have simplified them by closing one and putting all the contents into another that had a higher rate of interest. Then I took a long hard look at the amounts going out of my current account and have pushed on with cancelling some of the regular payments.. I mentioned the sports channel that I cancelled immediately - that's nearly £7 a month and so far we haven't missed watching it.

Now a long hard look at a garden scheme subscription and having chatted together we've decided that as we rarely visit the gardens in question it would be cheaper to pay on an individual visit fee - quite a saving this one - £58!

Next, membership of a craft guild that I haven't got back to after the pandemic and know that the timing of it makes it very unlikely that I will (and I can always pay a small visitor fee if I want to) - another £20.

Finally I have made myself look carefully at the magazines I read. One or two are unmissable in my book so they stay, but one hasn't been so good for a while so that's going too - yet another £40 a year.

Phew!

Excuse me if I get a little sidetracked now, but I finally got around to doing something I've toyed with for ages... 

With all the crafty bits I've got around I have dallied with the odd craft fair and even had a local shop stock one or two of my felt brooches, they've even gone on an online auction site too when I was getting rid of some bits and bobs. I've always wondered about an online shop and generally chickened out at the last moment. Now thought, I've taken the plunge with some of these...

and the odd card or two...

I'll let you know how it goes - after all some of this might reappear with another elephant once I look at raising extra cash...

Anyway, back to business..

Month 2 - Bite 4

The amount of electrical stuff I found once I did my power audit around the place was astounding! How did my family ever cope when I was growing up with only one socket in each room upstairs?

From today I'll be doing the 'power walk' every day as I know we're forgetting to switch things off, so from now on I'm on the prowl. I've already switched (sorry) to charging my phone and tablet just once a day rather than popping it on and off the charger. The laptop is no longer on constant charge and the TVs are off standby. Once I'd done a bit of research it would seem that more than one of the TVs still carries on using around a third of the power when I had thought it was turned off. That's the equivalent of leaving it running on full for 8 hours a day. No more, no more I say.

Month 2 - Bite 5

I did apply myself to the food task last month and although our sugar mountain has only marginally decreased (mainly, in my defence, because I went and bought more to make marmalade) much of the other stuff has been well and truly diminished. In fact, today I went off and did a 'big shop' because we'd almost run out of store cupboardy bits. 

I've even applied myself to recipes for using things up - hence our new 'favourite' of pasta bake.. don't know why I haven't gone for this before.. it was prompted by a surplus of mushrooms of all things!

Would you believe we've still got some Christmas chocolate stocks left (they'll be gone in the next day or so), but it has brought it home to me how much we had lying around.

Month 2 - Bite 6

Speaking of Christmas - I'm still enjoying my Christmas bathtime goodies (thanks Juds). It's been great not to have to buy so many of the toiletries I usually need, just by checking on what I've got. I also had a look at some other items while I was having my bathroom sort out. There were some rather old lotions and potions that are probably lacking in oomph now they are aging a bit. I found some sun cream that would have been fine normally, but seeing as the recent situation has rather got in the way of holidays in strong sunshine it never got used. There were also some lipsticks and glosses that no longer suited me (not sure one or two ever did to be frank!). Having checked out whether they would do me any harm I've used them up as moisturiser (the sun cream) and lip protection (although some of the older stuff definitely went into the bin). Now I can even see what I've got as well as have space once I actually need to replace them.