Snoskred Lives

parent

Year Of Buying Nothing Update #4

2 Comments Posted on May 2, 2018May 2, 2018 by Snoskred

Nothing was required, so nothing was purchased. YAY. Our record thus far – January, February, April = nothing bought. March = something bought. One out of 4 is not bad, especially when you consider I didn’t go crazy and shop up a storm in the Nay month, I just bought those few things we needed at IKEA then went right back to no-buying.

No Spend Days April

My goal this month was 13 days in a row no spend goal – if not for the TVSN final payment falling on the wrong day I would have achieved 15 days in between spends.

The last entry includes a gift voucher I bought for Mum for Mothers Day, so she can try having her nails done.

No Spend Goals For May

Next month I will try something a bit different – a maximum of one spend day each week. Now that the TVSN payment is completed, I should have absolute control over this. There are 5 weeks in May and I would like to limit my spend days to 4 in total if possible.

I am concerned that I might not have enough warm clothes for winter and may need to make either May or June Nay months instead of Yay months on the no-buy challenge. I did a wardrobe re-organise and washed everything that hasn’t been worn during summer and spring, so we will see how that goes.

Grocery Spending April

Grocery Budget for April = $600

Coles month – $158.35
Aldi month – $425.54
Bulk Chicken $37.85
Total grocery spend – $621.74
Grocery cost of $20.72/day.

We went 21.74 over budget this month thanks to a dishwasher tablet special @37 cents a tablet, we bought 4 bags so hopefully we will not need those again for a while – and bulk chicken on special ($6.99/kg).

Coles tried to tempt us into spending $80 a week for 4 weeks to earn $50 in flybys points. We could not even spend $80 in the first week, even after buying two quite expensive chicken roasts @ $15 each, now on special for $12 of course – which we tried the first fortnight and decided we loved enough to put a couple in the freezer.. they are almost like the Lenards mini roasts we used to buy. The stuffing is delicious, I highly recommend. :)

There was simply not enough of the things we buy on special to add up to $80. We have stocked up on most of our regular buys in past months.

Three of the items I had planned to buy at Coles that week I found at Aldi for a lot less $$. The most notable item being chai spice latte powder. I had planned to buy the Arkadia version at Coles which was on special for $5.20 and found a seemingly identical item at Aldi for $4.49 – they have matcha and turmeric latte powder available there too.

I wanted this to add chai flavour to my lattes and protein shakes. The first ingredient is sugar, and they suggest you use four heaped teaspoons which would be a LOT of sugar. I find one normal teaspoon is usually enough and I replace one of my sugar teaspoons in afternoon coffee with this. What I love most is the star anise flavour in this powder, it is gorgeous and not always present in Chai tea. The powder is great sprinkled on top of milk foam, too.

Grocery Spending Goals For May

We last bought potatoes in bulk on the 15th of March and we are still eating those same potatoes. I’ll make it through this week but we will probably have to buy some on our next shop. I may suggest we head up to Shellharbour and do another bulk buy though there is a big airshow on at Albion Park this weekend which will make getting around a bit troublesome.

We may up the vegetable buying this month as it is time for making winter soups, and I need to get some Vili’s pasties from the bulk shop. We just did a bulk chicken buy of 5kg and that made us 5 x2 packs of Chicken Kiev for the freezer, as well as 4 lots of chicken pieces.

I cooked 68 sausage rolls in one bulk cook, 66 of which went into the freezer. Yes we only ate two! I made “Meat Thing” which is essentially my sausage roll mixture (beef mince, carrot, brussel sprouts, leek, egg, cheese, whizz in the food processor, make into sausage rolls) put into muffin tins without pastry for dinner.

May has 31 days so the grocery budget is $620.

April Thoughts

Happy moments, the Brussels are back at last! I knew they would be appearing soon so I had added them to this months shopping list.

In April we had an incident with the best before date on some thickened cream ending one week into our fortnight, when the thing I had planned to cook with it was in the second week. So now I will write the date of our next shop on each shopping list and we will aim to get milk, cream, and other short life products to expire on/after that date.

2018yobn

Ikea Non Buys

5 Comments Posted on April 25, 2018June 28, 2018 by Snoskred

LOOK the deities are trying to show me the way to IKEA. Sorry deities, I am 100% aware of where IKEA is thanks! ;)

And Now Snoskred Presents – Things I Did Not Buy From IKEA In March. Written towards the end of April, because time completely got away from me recently. Actually I have a stack of posts in part-finished format and I will need to focus in on that in May.

Overall, what I did not buy was a lot less stuff than I thought. We definitely need new black out curtains for our bedroom and my lounge room. These SOLIDASTER are beautiful. The black part feels like a flocked velvet. #tobuy2019 :)

We already have two MATLUST chopping boards so I resisted buying another one or several. These are great for pizza night, they do not curl up with the extra heat.

The MOLGAN is very handy for night time. We have a version of this in our ensuite and I would like to add in a couple more to other parts of the house, maybe the hallway and the other toilet.

I could have bought all the candles but I restrained myself and did not buy a single one. These NJUTNING were a bit up money but they did smell fantastic. The website says – A spicy scent of bergamot and tea with warm milk. When the candle has burnt itself out the cup can be used as a tealight holder. – I have never had any success turning one of these cups into a candle holder. There must be a way to do it, if I ever buy one of these I will google that. :)

You can see what we did buy here – I am happy to report that after several bulk cooks, these KONCIS were exactly what we needed and they dishwash beautifully.

2018yobn, IKEA, Things I Did Not Buy

Friday Funny 2

3 Comments Posted on April 20, 2018March 30, 2018 by Snoskred

First up, best photo ever used in an ad trying to sell something!

Secondly, let me see if I have this straight. This rust bucket will cost me $200, unless I choose to risk my life and try starting this car which has not been started in five years, and for risking my life I have to pay an extra $300? WTF?

If I try it and it does not work, is that still an extra $300? What if I buy it for $200, take it away on a trailer, and try it without you knowing, will you hunt me down for the extra $300?

I “recon” that the seller will be keeping this rust bucket for a while! ;)

Fail Whale, wrong world

An Aussie Visitor

4 Comments Posted on April 18, 2018April 15, 2018 by Snoskred

On Easter Monday there was a kitty commotion. Grumpy is our door guard, and sometimes she behaves like there is a cat outside and there *is* and other times she behaves that way and I can see nothing at all. But this time, there was quite a sight to be seen! And she was freaking out. I looked out the window and dropped everything I was doing, ran out the back and told The Other Half to put down the hose and follow me.

I’d read on Facebook that a property nearby had a resident Echidna and it had dropped in to visit.

It climbed up on the windowsill to stare at Grumpy, and you can see Grumpy was Not Amused, or perhaps just not sure what the heck this was. But it did not just want to visit us in the front yard, and promptly went and dug under the fence. Seeing what was likely to happen, we had already locked the chooks up. The minute this thing climbed under the fence, the girls went crazy, side eye-ing, bagerking and clucking up a storm.

It was starting to get dark, so something had to be done. Lucky we have a country farm boy living here, and lucky he is a welder and had some serious gloves handy. You do not want to handle one of these creatures without major protection.

The first thing they do is try to dig themselves in. They are very determined creatures, but so is The Other Half.

This lovely creature was relocated back to the property it lives on. :)

Aussie Culture, country life

Things I Did Not Buy March

2 Comments Posted on April 16, 2018June 5, 2018 by Snoskred

Those candle holders outlined in pink are just perfect for my candle shelf, but #yobn too bad so sad. I am a *bit* sad about this one though, because I think they would reflect the candle light beautifully and also allow me to put a couple of candles up higher. They are at Haven & Space in Berry and the deal with that place is a little bit like Costco – if you don’t buy it when you see it chances are you won’t see it again.

Maybe I will add this to my List Of Things To Look For in 2019 which will be very easy, just look back through all these posts and see what I did not buy. And speaking of things I want to add to my List Of Things To Buy In 2019.. I would like to get a decent ring.

I have several rings which no longer fit me. One of which is mystic topaz that I bought in Hawaii and I am thinking now maybe I will get that put into a new setting of some kind. More than likely silver because I prefer that.

It might be time to take my stuff in and get a price on having this done, because jewellery sitting unworn is a bit of a waste, and it is technically not *buying* something. I’m probably going to visit a local jeweller to do this and will likely buy a ring locally in 2019 but I do like some of the rings available on TVSN, mostly the NY Gems and Dallas Prince stuff.

I have been eyeing this ring for about 6 months now. But I have no idea what ring size I am. Interestingly I asked them to send me a ring sizer back when I ordered my Pilates machine, and it has never arrived. I wonder if this is fate, or perhaps #yobn special powers.

This top is totally my thing, except for the neckline.

This is the kind of thing I went looking for in the latter half of 2017 and did not find, so I ended up with these tops from Factorie.

TVSN had themselves a little Easter Saturday sale, and HOOLEY DOOLEY I would so have bought a couple of things, if not for #yobn magically selling out my sizes. My Boo Radley dress I did not buy in January at $59.95 was now $34.95, but totally sold out in my size.

And this cute little dress which I totally would have bought in black was only available in grey in my size and I did not love the grey one. You can see why – look how all the details pop on the black one and kinda vanish on the grey. I have seen a lot of their garments locally and have always been impressed with the quality even if the item was not my style.

These would have been a great addition to my winter wardrobe and at those prices I would not have minded breaking my #yobn pledge – when we are talking about saving over $100 and it is a designer one loves and enjoys, it becomes a bargain and we have a rule about that in this house, too.

This post became too long to add in the IKEA stuff so that will be a post on its own! ;)

2018yobn, Things I Did Not Buy

Year Of Buying Nothing Update #3

3 Comments Posted on April 2, 2018March 31, 2018 by Snoskred

March was the first month where something was purchased. Yes, it was a need, not a want. Even so.. in keeping with the spirit of the challenge, this is our first nay month.

No Spend Days

While I do want less spend days, I do not want to let them stop us from having experiences. As The Other Half was on holidays for the first two weeks of March, the spend days were more often than usual this month. My goal for a 13 day stretch of no spending was a bit unrealistic given the situation.

A Note About Fuel

That is the first time you will have seen fuel on our spend lists this year, and I want to point out that was not fuel for my car. The Other Half buys his own fuel and it does not appear on our spend lists because I have zero control over when he chooses or needs to do that. On this occasion I bought his fuel. The no-spend challenge is 100% mine and I am only counting buying decisions I make, or money that comes out of *my* accounts.

I have not put fuel into my Polo yet this year. You might think I am not using it, but you’d be wrong. It is not driving very far when it does go driving, but it does get out and about and racks up 30kms or so each week. My car is incredibly fuel efficient. I will get at least 600kms out of each tank of fuel and if you do the maths, 30×13 = 390. I estimate I will need to fill it up around week 20 (15th of May) of this year unless I suddenly up my mileage.

The other Polo does a lot more driving but even so, putting fuel into that car is quite rare. If you are interested I will go through The Other Half’s account and give you a chart of his fuel fillups. I am going to ask him to track his fuel from now on but it will not be seen in the no-spend spreadsheet.

A Note About Large Numbers Seen Above

We did our regular eye tests at Specsavers this month, and both of us needed new prescriptions, thus new glasses. I got one pair as my change was not hugely significant and all my old glasses and sunglasses will still work, The Other Half got two new pairs of reading glasses.

There is a large number for Bulk Nutrients in the final week of March – I bought 15kg of protein. I’m going to talk more about that in a separate post next Wednesday.

No Spend Goals For April

This month I should have no trouble at all meeting my March 13 day no spend goal.

Grocery Spending

We absolutely smashed our grocery goal this month. We were nearly $60 under budget. $20 of that is me taking $10 off our Coles shop twice, but I think a fairly good portion of our saving is because we’ve stocked up big when things we regularly use are on special and we’re not having to buy as much stuff when we shop.

We also bought fruit and veg in bulk including 15kg of potatoes while on our way back from the food festival. I made a huge pot of soup the following weekend and we have plenty of leftovers from that. On colder days I have the soup with protein added.

We bought a big 5kg bag of Laucke wholemeal bread machine mix this month – it was on special for $13.10 and we will not need to buy bread mix again for quite a while. The Other Half is the one who eats bread for the most part but I will usually have one slice when we make an occasional loaf.

Coles March – $105.75
Aldi March – $434.28
Bulk Fruit & Veg $19.47
Total grocery spend – $559.50
Grocery cost of $18.04/day.

Grocery Spending Goals For April

For the rest of this challenge I will be trying to get that daily number down, but it might creep back up a little bit when I do some new maths.

I’ve noticed we are getting low on dishwasher tablets, so that is on my keep an eye out for a good special list. April has 30 days, so I am setting the budget at $600 this month. If the special on dishwasher tablets is good enough, I may blow the budget, just so we don’t have to buy them again for a while. This will be the first time we have had to buy them in 2018, and I had not bought them for a long time in 2017 because the special was so great we stocked up HUGE.

Shopping Incidents

There were a couple of “incidents” this month with grocery shopping.

We’d very carefully planned out our Coles shop and everything went perfectly. We spent $84 at the checkout and if I spent $80, I earned another $10 off my shop. Right before I went to pay, the checkout asked me if I want to take $10 off my shop – and not realising this would mean my total became $74 instead of $84, I stupidly chose yes.

I was so mad at myself, then I became mad at Coles and felt a bit like I’d been scammed. I think $10 off should be a form of payment almost like a gift card, not a reduction in your overall spend.

In the meantime, unknown to myself, Aldi had weighed our one lot of sweet potatoes twice, and charged us twice for them. We only bought one lot of sweet potatoes. I am not normally someone who asks for a refund but it was nearly $10, so I took the receipt in and explained what happened. They gave me a refund.

This has happened occasionally since we began our receipt spreadsheets but usually they have selected the wrong item eg once they chose red onions instead of green capsicum, and I nearly went mad trying to work out where these onions we supposedly bought had gone, then asked the other half if he remembered putting them away. He did not, and checked the receipt again, we eventually worked out what happened.

So before we leave the store in future I will be checking the receipt. Plus I will keep a closer eye on the screen as the checking out happens. Usually I am so busy watching The Other Half fill the trolley with scanned items that I forget to look at the screen.

I have to tell you, The Other Half at the checkout is quite a sight to see and I was not sure how I would be able to look away from it. :) But on our second shop this month, I stood behind the trolley and set my eyes firmly on the checkout LCD readout, and before we left the store I double checked the receipt to make sure the items were correctly scanned.

March Thoughts

Overall March felt a bit like a fail. But it really was not. The grocery spend was the lowest it has ever been. I did some big batch cooking to bring it down even more.

2018yobn

Currently In Snoskredland

5 Comments Posted on March 26, 2018March 25, 2018 by Snoskred

READING: All of the Agatha Christie mysteries in the order of detective and when they were written. I’ve completed the 12 books of Miss Marple and am just a few books away from completing the 45 books of Hercule Poirot.

WATCHING: Every Sunday night 13th Street presently is airing one episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot with David Suchet. I am not sure whether I enjoy them or hate watch them. A few of the episodes take well known stories and changes them for unknown and seemingly zero reasons at all which makes me side eye this show so hard. Some of the episodes are true to the original story and some of them feature quite the cast – Murder on the Orient Express was one of the better ones with Jessica Chastain.

HATING: myself for getting sucked into Married at First Sight this year. This is truly trash television, it is so bad but I can’t look away. Thank the deities it finished last week and I can “reclaim my time“.

COOKING: I made a version of Chicken Cordon Bleu which was epic. I coat the chicken in Dijon mustard and pan fried, then towards the end I placed Beerenberg Cheeseboard Chutney spread underneath some very sharp cheddar that was left over from a cheese platter we had in February which needed to be used up. On the top I placed freshly cut smoked ham from Aldi.

LOVING: This Cordelia Street dress from TVSN, but #yobn2018 means I cannot buy it. There are some dresses which are the essence of me put into a dress and this is one of them. It is sold out in my size now. I feel like this is a great price and I probably would have bought it, if not for my current challenge.

CREATING: More choc-honeycomb no-bake cheesecakes.

WORKING: out very hard with the workout I have nicknamed “Yvette Hell” – I have chopped it into bits with Handbrake, so I can repeat the bits I most love until I master them. I just started on the Jenny Ford Hawaii workout last week and with any step workout it takes time for me to get the steps right.

MASTERING: There are some super challenging combination steps in my workout videos and every time I get one right I feel like I am winning at working out. Coordination has never been my strongest thing but I am getting better at it every day. I do enjoy these workouts.

MOURNING: The loss of my afternoon coffee mug. I was taking it out of the dishwasher and it hit another mug, and the game was over. I could go and buy another one from Few and Far for around $7, but we have plenty of other mugs I can use, and #yobn2018.

PLAYING: Diablo 2 with The Other Half. I am old school when it comes to games and this is one of my favourites. I am not a fan of the newer games. I prefer to play the older games that I know.

CLEANING: out the freezer in preparation for autumn and winter.

FREEZING: all the mushrooms. That has to be the best thing I ever learned to do.

country life, stuff

Sunny

4 Comments Posted on March 21, 2018March 21, 2018 by Snoskred

The new Volkswagen Polo ad which you may have seen, though likely the shorter 30 second version, features a very fascinating transformer car costume. The logistics of which are somewhat blowing my mind, but I try not to think too hard about it. Unfortunately the song they have used gets stuck in my head, which leads me to think about it, and what I have figured out is, this costume might be technically impossible to actually make.

I love the colour of that car, how gorgeous. Funny that we have never once got the car colour we initially set out to buy. On at least two occasions we have tried to buy an electric blue car, but it has never worked out that way.

After a few days of this ad music running through my head, I googled to see what it actually is. Now I am not at all surprised that it got stuck in there. “Sunny” is a song by Boney M.

Another thought I had, while trying to go to sleep and having this music on loop in my head, the end of this ad shows the Polo self parallel parking. I’ve had my Polo for nearly 8 years and I cannot recall a time I ever once parallel parked. In fact, I cannot remember ever parallel parking once since my drivers test over 20 years ago. Not once ever.

I asked The Other Half if he ever remembers me parking parallel and he said no. Maybe my Polo feels a bit short changed, that I never do this feat of parking. Or maybe it is super happy about that?

I do not think I would ever use a self parallel parking feature. I would like a shiny yellow/gold Polo, but how would I stop hearing that song if I had one? I’m 100% sure once these Polos start arriving on the road, the song Sunny will appear in my mind if I see one that colour.

I have established a collection of what I like to call “Polo Parks”. There are rules about where I feel comfortable parking my car. They go like this –

1. Must have one side where no other car can park next to it, eg a garden or concrete edging or a large concrete pole like you find in carparks. Preferably, it would have *two* sides where no other car can park next to it, like the park you see above.

2. Must allow me the ability to park right up against that side leaving ample space for idiots to open their car doors without their car doors ever going anywhere near my Polo.

3. Must be easy to get in and out of. Preferably no turning when reversing AKA I can go straight backwards.

4. Must not have a time limit of less than 1 hour, because usually I am quicker than that but sometimes I wander about.

5. Must provide a decent walk to my destination. I never park near to the shop(s), and sometimes I will park extra far away just to get the steps on my fitbit.

There are probably 10-12 specific carparks in the Shoalhaven which I always head to first. If they are taken by another car, I head for the next nearest Polo park. Sometimes this can mean going to another carpark altogether and then I have to walk back, but I do not think that is a downside.

Sephyroth often receives photos of my Polo parked in Polo parks. He sends Focus park photos back to me. I might have to ask him which particular carpark he has received the most photos of. That would be interesting to know! ;)

I did not park the Polo here, and you can tell that because it has been reversed in. I never reverse into a park. :) I also tend to steer clear of trolley returns. But The Other Half does not mind them as much.

One of my Aspergers “Special Gifts” is recognising numberplates. It is not a conscious thing at all, it happens magically somewhere in my brain. When I see a Volkswagen Polo out on the road, I can tell you where I normally see that one parked.

I can’t explain why my mind has decided to place the usual locations of these particular cars into a mental filing cabinet and keep track of all the numberplates.. like I say it is not a conscious thing at all, and I don’t very often think about it. But when I see a numberplate without a file already present, my mind will let me know that I have not seen that car before.

My mind does the same thing with phone numbers. When I worked in the call centre any number – particularly mobiles – I called was filed safely away. I could not *tell* you the numbers off the top of my head, but when I saw that number pop up on the caller ID, I knew who was calling me and would answer the phone with “Hello name” – it sometimes freaked people out, how did you know it was me calling? I just do, I can’t explain how, sorry. :)

Asperger Syndrome, driving

The Sock Project

7 Comments Posted on March 14, 2018March 12, 2018 by Snoskred

As mentioned in Monday’s post, socks are my kryptonite. I also said “But not buying these socks was one of the harder moments of this challenge for me.” My brain said – You might need socks later, and Aldi do not always have them available. It is just $6, what does it matter. You better get these now!

The way things work right now, I tend to have 7-10 pairs of socks that I wear over and over until they get a hole in them, then I either buy more because they are on Special Buys at Aldi, or dig some out of the Long Forgotten Socks drawer.

Rather than buying more socks, I figured it would be a good time to catalogue the socks I have and try wearing one pair each day.So the first task was to pull out all the socks from the Long Forgotten Sock Drawer, wash them, then pair them up again. I discovered I actually had two Long Forgotten Socks Drawers.

When I pulled the socks out of the dryer, The Other Half laughed at me and said how are you going to pair all these up? I did not initially comprehend the magnitude of the problem. After 40 minutes of sock pairing, I had to take a break, and I still had half the basket to go.

51 pairs of thin socks I can wear around the house.

13 pairs of long socks for wearing with boots.

8 pairs of bed socks.

5 pairs of fluffy long socks for house wear in winter.

17 pairs of black sports socks.

45 pairs of socks I can wear for workouts.

Plus 5 extra ones I had washed and forgot about, not pictured
The pair I was wearing at the time I did this – not pictured =

Total = 145 pairs of socks.

Dear Brain, I do not need to buy any more socks right now. So please shut up. ;)

If I wore only one pair per day I would be set for 145 days. The truth is, I do not wear only one pair per day. I wear one workout pair, then I have my shower, then I wear another pair of thin socks for the rest of the day. So in reality I am set for about 50 days.

You can expect the occasional Sock Friday where I montage together some of the cuter pairs, during this project.

No socks were purchased in the making of this post, but many, many, MANY socks were paired.

2018yobn, Aldi, shopping, Snoskred Socks

Things I Did Not Buy – February

2 Comments Posted on March 12, 2018June 5, 2018 by Snoskred

Noni B had a $20 sale, luckily none of the dresses I love were included. I already own one of the above tops – the Effie – I did like the Candice and Shelly but KTHXNOBUY. :)

We went to the local cheap shop to buy, of all things, Isopropyl Alcohol which we use for cleaning laptops, phones and tablets. As this is a cleaning item it is not on my Can’t Buy list. ;) Last time I’d paid some ridiculous amount for it at Bunnings for what seemed like a tiny bottle of it – here we got double the size for half the price. While there I spotted these colourful hanging things for $12.99 and the pompoms were velvety and so gorgeous, but KTHXNOBUY.

You guys, YOU GUYS. Socks are like my kryptonite. I am a firm believer that you can never have too many socks and this one time I bought a truly magnificent set from Aldi, when I went back the next week to get more they were totally sold out.

Aldi socks are perfection in my opinion especially the workout socks. They have never once let me down yet, not a single blister ever, and they are my main go-to for a workout sock. PLUS you get three pairs so they are $2 a pair which is CRAY CRAY.

This did lead me to do a big clean out of the sock drawer which provided me with an extremely shocking discovery, I will tell you about that on Wednesday. In the process I re-discovered a few old favourites that had vanished. I do have enough socks to last the year. I really do. But not buying these socks was one of the harder moments of this challenge for me.

PS Sorry if I am absent a little bit last week and this week, The Other Half is on holidays and we are catching up on some chores and activities we have been meaning to do. :) There are several emails I have not replied to and I am not leaving a lot of comments. I’ll get to it soon, I promise!

2018yobn, Aldi, Things I Did Not Buy