The friendly frugaleers natter on through November...

[blueteapot]

Hope you dont mind me starting a shiny new thread

passed my exam!

can't remember when I last posted. Birthday was a bit quiet as DH has been working so much. Tail end of the cold from hell still lingering on and I now have bilateral conjunctivitis and a delightful looking cold sore... have massively upped intake of berries etc to combat being so run down!

Minimal spends though as a consequence. Yesterday in town I laid for lunch out £13, wellies for DS £2 in charity shop and fleecy sheepskin booties to keep DDs feet warm as it's freezing here £5 (in Dunnes! There was definitely a Manchester dunnes when we lived there!)

Yay well done blue congratulations!!

ipsos I'm in jersey. Supposed to be the sunniest place in the British Isles. lies

Back from babysitting. Lovely time. She realised 45 minutes in that mum was gone and cried. Then found my keys. And chewed on them for a while. Kept her quiet and happy.

Thanks babs and for all the top wellies tips everyone! Might get some with my nectar points!

Well done blue!

Today will be £2 on toddler group and £20 petrol

Well done blue.

I'm going to aldi at lunch as I want a thingy for my Christmas fireplace, whatever the word is.

Garland

That's really weird about all the residential trips Girl. I wouldn't really want ds to go on a residential until he's really quite big. I've checked though, and our school residential trips are all optional. (Phew!)

Blue Well done! Excellent news. :-) Maybe bung in some vitamin D + Mg along with that. Vit D sorts out cold sores for me in about 3 days.

Oooo! Em I've been there. Good Zoo.

Well done blue!

That's a lot of trips for year 5? Girl. Our school are pretty good with families who have issues getting the money. Do you feel you can approach them?

Well done Blue!

Day three of holiday yesterday

£2 on coffee for DH (free milk for DS)
£12 on drinks at the children's disco

We are doing really well on not spending on holiday, soup lunch and homepride dinners and snacks we brought with us. It means I'm not panicking about how much we are spending. Today we are going bowling so will have a drink with that. Father Christmas this afternoon so that will be fun!

I have £25 of vouchers to spend here so I think that will pay for lunch tomorrow. Annoyingly I might have to buy some nappies here, they will be so expensive I want to weep!

Very have emailed me back and asked which code and they will apply it, I shall wait and see and inform them I will return my whole order if they don't.

Congrats blue well done you, sorry to hear you're not feeling well.

Ramp up your vitamin c, a nutritionalist told me once to take one of those chewable vit c tablets every hour while you're sick not to the point of diarrhoea obviously! It's a water soluble vitamin so you can't overdose. I've done this when I get cold and it's gone in a couple of days, as well as vaporub on soles of your feet in socks at night time.

whatabout that's brilliant news about the voucher

I'm playing hardball with my mobile phone company. They mixed up my order 2 years ago when I took out my contract, now they're trying to keep me tied in for an extra 8 months as a result, it's so not happening I'm going to bombard them with emails and facebook posts until they rightfully allow me out of my contract.

Em I was in Jersey years ago to break up with my ex, it's a fabulous spot and we had a lovely time before going our separate ways. Lots of flights to get there though from Ireland to Gatwick, Gatwick to Jersey and back again all within a weekend.

Too many blinking crapauds on mn if you ask me. Em I'm from the other place.

Bit of a spendy week so far. Have paid for work Christmas meal so that's done. Also the council tax. Just flights home for Christmas to go, which is the big expense. I'm not sure how flybe have ever managed to get away with marketing themselves as a budget airline.

I'm having a bit of an odd time with my plasterer now. He keeps asking me for equipment that he should have brought with him and getting a bit irritable and huffy if I am reluctant to produce it. Then he asked for half the money in cash tomorrow and got shirty with me when I was reluctant to do that. We're in this for four more days. That's going to be interesting.

Can I ask a question about the Sainsburys double up event please?

I've been to my local shop, I have £13 worth of nectar points so asked for one £5 to £10 voucher for wine and one £5 to £10 voucher for entertainment.

When I've purchased my goods I paid the difference over the £10 (so the wine came to £15 so I paid £5 and my cd was £11 so I paid £1), but no points have come off my nectar balance....

Surely this isn't right? I'm confused!!

Well done blue

£20 at Lidl this morning after I bought some extra cat food since ours like the ones in jelly which always sell out.
Older dd (year 5) is going on residential trip, it's £134 at Porthpean camp for 3 days. Her school does camps from year 3 to 6. I already paid the deposit £40 last month and now I am paying the rest by instalments by 20th May and luckily my sil/bil usually send some money towards it too. Next year camp is at Isles of Scilly for 5 days which was £220 when ds went and he really enjoyed it.

My hoover is on the blink. I've been debating a steam mop for ages also.

Opinions please
Lidl had a steam mop and a rechargeable sweeper this week - will these two items be good buys? Lidl Link

We have a mix of solid and laminate flooring and tiles, no carpet at all. Is a hoover a waste of money?

Lilac I have a steam mop, which was very useful indeed when ds was small and crawling around on the kitchen floor. I used to use it a lot and it was very effective. It's been out of use for a while now since the council pest control officer sprinkled mouse poison all over it in our stair cupboard. I'm still flumoxed about whether that's a solvable problem. tbh, it has a very similar effect to just wiping the floor all over with a tea towel dipped in hot soapy water.

I would or my cleaner does mop every week but wonder is it a better job than that.

My mother tells me they're great for cleaning shower etc.

Ds is potty training so I'm wondering would it help with smell of pee around too!

Thanks guys. Don't feel our steam mop does as good a clean as a normal mop and cleaning fluid but it is handy for a quick going over in between proper mopping, if that makes sense?

Personally, I think steam mops work if you're a quick mop every day type person. If you allow your floor to get properly dirty and only mop once a week or fortnight in my case, you need something more heavy duty.

Congratulations on passing, Blue .

Your plasterer sounds hard work, ipsos. Hope his work makes up for his personality!

Ours does a very similar job to a cloth and soapy water but when ds was very small and crawling I was much happier to clean with steam rather than soap or flash or whatever, since he'd inevitably end up with the cleaning chemicals on his hands and babygrow. I definitely was very pleased with the steam mop when he was small, especially during the weaning phase when our kitchen was spatter coated with blueberry puree at least three times a day.

I have this one:

www.amazon.co.uk/Bionaire-BA70264UK-Steam-Mop/dp/B003UTUO7M

It's quick and quiet and effective and the sock thing washes well in the washing machine and goes back on easily.

Later on I also blew two years worth of tesco tokens on a polti steam cleaner like this, to try to deal with carpet dust mites:

www.johnlewis.com/polti-vaporetto-eco-pro-3000-steam-cleaner/p231525835?sku=231525835&kpid=231525835&s_kenid=d62db529-3c51-4fe8-96db-1e13941825df&s_kwcid=402x360284&tmad=c&tmcampid=73

Oddly this big one is far less effective at cleaning the kitchen floor, though it is very good at cleaning uPVC doors and window frames and things like that. I tried the carpets, but it's very hard to know whether it's actually having any effect on dust mites.

Ds is a showers in his pre school play and he needs a costume. I'm not sure I'm clever enough to fashion one with a tea towel

Lilac...I've bought and returned 4 steam mops as they just don't live up to expectation!

IME they leave the floor soaking wet and just push the dirt around. My e-cleaner mop does a much better job.

Seems like steam mop isn't the right idea for me so creme I'm definitely not a mop every day person and dh thinks they're bad for the wood floors.

Still wondering about the rechargeable sweeping brush though?

Probably not, Lilac. I have a Vileda spray and mop now, that I bought on Amazon for about £20, and it does the job well.

£7 on travel, dropping off two job applications and £5 on my card on a nice coffee and a muffin, as I missed lunch. Oh and £44.98 came out, for my online shopping order on Tuesday.

I can't wait to get home. This bus is full of screaming, shouting teenagers, very loud, middle aged women and a screeching baby downstairs .