Anyone up for a Use it up and Don't spend January thread?

[nocutsnobuttsnococonuts]

I've sorted out my cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom today and realised I have so much stuff I have never gotten around to using and desperately need to use up.

we are on a tight budget and I seem to keep buying without using up the store cupboard stuff. I want to get to a point where we have 2/3 tins of each item and a packet of lentils/rice etc. not the 15 tins of chopped tomatoes, 4 bags of lentils and 12 soaps (Dr botanicals thanks to the bargain thread), 8 bottles of contact lenses solution I currently have!!!

we are in a smallish house and there's stuff everywhere so storing all this is ridiculous. plus I'm a terrible cook I have no idea what to do with lentils....

who's up for joining me? share your hoards and let's use up our cupboards up together 😁

I want to use up tins of paint. I've been thinking that for about 3 years.
I have some really nice Dulux, nearly full tins. I've got all the equipment I need. Just need to empty rooms and get on with it.

No spend apart from milk today. Have planned meals from freezer until payday. Bread and butter pud made from panettone tonight. My turn to do cake/cookies (not sandwiches) for 30 people for a social soon. Any cheap tasty recipe ideas please?

I'm going to join if that's okay. Been lurking since the start and using up loads of food from the cupboards.

Think I've halved my weekly shopping spend and determined to cycle/walk more so that I don't need to fill up the car until payday which is at the end of the month.

Cooking on a bootstrap is a really good site for cheap recipes. There are cake and biscuit receipts too. There are no weird ingredients and most of the time I have the stuff in.

No spend day

Meal planning sounds a good plan. I think I might go through my freezers and cupboards and see what I can come up with which reminds me I need to take the pork chops and mash out to defrost for tomorrow

Oh and I think I will use the rest of the carton of cream to make a trifle. Still got ingredients over as was planning 2cat Christmas but only did 1

I need to do a food shop tomorrow as we're out of most fresh stuff and unusually pasta. Am planning meals around what food we have in the cupboards.

The fridge is starting to look bare and there’s space in the freezer...! Have a shop planned for Saturday which will still be cheaper than usual as I’ve actually meal planned. Returned a dress to shops today and bought a new pair of boots which probably left me cost neutral - £10 down today in total. So far managed to avoid any amazon purchases!

Not got round to the trifle but still might.

Need a loaf of bread and more milk and I think I'll get a big bunch of coriander so I can make soup with the endless carrots I seem to have hanging about the place. Otherwise have everything we need.

There's a small spare appearing in one of my overloaded freezers.

Cheese and biscuits for lunch... why oh why do I have so much flipping cheese?

I've got the remnants of a bag of soup mix pulses soaking to make leek and potato soup tomorrow. Also uses up some potatoes. Made a start on the 3 boxes of risotto rice yesterday.
Finished a bubble bath and another shampoo today.

I made cottage pie tonight and made extra for a quick meal one night.

Sorted my make up - binned a load of mascara that had gone clumpy and smelt a bit odd but I’m ok for foundation and primer for ages.

DD1 needed new vests managed to get some reduced in Sainsbury’s I have put the old ones in the cleaning cupboard to use as cleaning cloths.

Sold a load of baby clothes and tidied the attic today we can actually move up there and I have made £185 since last week selling things

Wow @Wineandchoccy thats impressive-where are you selling things? I have loads to sell- I find eBay a bit of a faff.

I have been selling on local Facebook pages @Whattodowithaminute

Well it's the 16th and I've still not done a big food shop (last shop before Christmas). We've obviously had to top up milk and fresh produce but no "big shop" for dinners. I'd say we've got another week or so before we need to do one.

I'm not sure if I'm proud or embarrassed.

Split pea daal on the go at the moment, that'll do two dinners. With some pitta bread and mango chutney.

£3 on 8 pints of milk and a loaf of bread that I didn't get yesterday.

Daal with rice and salad for dinner and just taken mince out of freezer for bolognese tomorrow.

I've got a huge chunk of stilton. Can I grate it, freeze it and then use it for cooking ?

Not sure about freezing stilton, I usually make my leftover stilton into brocolli and stilton soup and freeze that. Or you could make a cheese sauce and freeze that? I find that if you freeze cheese it seems to change the texture, but then I suppose if you're going to cook it, that doesn't matter so much.

I've today said goodbye to the scrap car which has been sitting on my driveway for two years today, and received £110 for it in return, so I'm definitely up this week! I have a piece of beef which has been in the freezer since november defrosting for dinner tonight, and we actually meal planned and stuck to it this week, which is brilliant, Leftovers have gone into the freezer too, rather than being thrown away. I need to get fresh stuff, and milk and bread, but other than that, not a lot of shopping needed. I also posted 15 items I've sold on ebay this week including a huge bundle of baby clothes which are no longer cluttering up my spare room, and I have loads more listed on there, and more still to list too. DH has cleared out his workshop too, and dug out some things to be sold. It definitely feels like we've had a change of attitude in this house, we're putting more thought into what we buy, and looking hard at what we own to decide whether we really need it or not. DS has his 2nd birthday coming up next week, so that is going to be a challenge, he has so many toys already!

That sounds like me, listsandbudgets, I couldn't resist a bargain either!

@MapMyMum, I blend it all so I keep the stalks in. I think it helped thicken the soup as well. I did remove the woodier asparagus tips that hadn't softened enough though.

I'm doing quite well not shopping. Had 6 pack of UHT milk in my emergency stash that runs out in Feb, so we've just finished using them up, rather than buying fresh milk.
I bake my own bread and have tons (slight exaggeration) of flour, so not needed to buy that either as I've even made my own chapati!
Freezer is slowly going down, and this week's soup will consist of broccoli stalks, leftover green beans, 2 wilted spring onions, leftover carrot tops/tails and half a leftover red pepper. All I will add is some frozen meat stock from the last roast we had and maybe a handful of pearl barley.

When we have meat, I strain off the fat and juices, then I freeze the jelly/juices for stock and try to use the fat up when cooking, where possible.

I needed to buy milk today though as well as eggs and some ham. Managed not to impulse buy loads though.....just 1 item that wasn't on my list . 22p for a quorn tikka masala!! Couldn't resist and had it for dinner as it was leftover night and there wasn't quite enough leftovers to go around.

Well I seem to be keeping my spending mainly down to things we actually need - bread,potatos, fruit, milk, veg though I did buy the children some chocolate croissants as a treat at the weekend. I actually have some space in my freezers at long last . Now I just have to resist buying lots of bargains to fill them up again. I've also found a whole leg of lamb we bought in December plus a huge joint of pork so that's the weekly roast sorted for a couple of weeks.

My nemesis seems to be books. DD loves reading as do I and we usually get through 3-4 books a week each. We do sometimes us the library but they dont always have what we want and seems to take forever for them to get them in so its ebay - usually £2-3 a book. I've just bought 2 from DD's GCSE history reading list (necessary obviously) but I think I might read them as well. I've probably spent £25 on books so far this month.

The amazing thing is I've still got about 50% of this months salary left in the bank although still got council tax to go out before I get paid again. Normally at this point in the month I'm cutting back drastically to get to the next pay day

^^50%^ I mean 25%... where one earth did I get 50 from...

We're doing ok here, dh has been baking tarts to use up some of the pantry staples, we seem to have tonnes of flour, god knows why! I've finished some bathroom stuff, and I'm still madly listing stuff on ebay too. Ds's birthday today though so we did end up buying a couple of things for that but I've found a load of stuff left over from his party last year so we're using as much of that as we can.