January money saving month

This is a list of the things we have done in January 2013 to cut costs and improve quality family time in the process

·         Purchased Salveo soap nuts. You have to try these...A years worth of laundry for £10!

·         Exchanged £12 of supermarket clubcard vouchers for £50 restaurant vouchers.  Will book up for us to go over the Valentines period. Romantic savings and food!

·         Brought scraps of fabric and Lampshade frames from ebay and made my own matching lampshades for our new bedroom design.

·         Cancelled Satelitte TV (we have a digital TV) we don’t really need Pause, Rewind and Record TV.

·         Downgraded mobile tariff, we never used all the free minutes and texts.

·         Used old towels that would have been binned as rags, I cut them into dishcloth sized pieces.

·         Used a £60 cash back offer from a Christmas purchase to bulk buy rice, pasta, meat and tinned tomatoes.

·         Cleared the loft by selling on ebay

·         Made my own Herman cake and froze the 3 portions you would normally give away

·         Booked our summer holiday from the newspaper offer “£10 holidays” It never works out at £10 per person but it’s still a cheap holiday for a family of 4.

·         Ordered all my seeds from a discount seed offer website and split the seeds with my mum so cut the price in half. I wouldn't grow 350 carrots in one year would I?!

·         Re-arranged the furniture so that we can use the kitchen dining room during the day which is nice and warm and then in the evenings we light the wood burner and have a cosy lounge.  This means we have been doing a lot more crafting and cooking, and because we are at the kitchen table you tend to talk more and that’s the best bit. Then snuggle time at night is lovely.

There is lots of ways you can save money and so far I think this is a pretty mighty effort for January! If you have any ideas please pass them on.

I will Blog soon with details of Herman Cake and Salveo Soap Nuts.