The friendly frugaleers natter on through November...

[blueteapot]

Hope you dont mind me starting a shiny new thread

That's what it is then.

Cranberry juice does work on UTIs. I tried it once. I drank two litres of the stuff and it solved the problem, at least until I could get to the GP next day. Apparently the metabolic breakdown products of cranberry juice stick to the bladder wall and make it too slippery for the bacteria to hold on to. Having a bath with infacare in the water also helps.

£600 pcm would have indeed been a steep increase! I have several Picasso paintings, all original ACTUALLY what !

Hope you feel better soon creme

Laughing at your DD's small pleasures pointless

I took ALL my stuff back to Next today that I panic bought, so £200 back on the card.

Final price for DD's flute was £120 on Ebay, so well chuffed with that.

Menu plan next week will involve -

Chicken wraps.
Soup
Pasta bake.
Moroccan pork.
Venison and butternut squash casserole.

I am feeling pretty washed out, and have hardly eaten any meat at all for the last week, hence next weeks plan has more. No idea if related or more related to the wine consumption last night...

river 21 degrees sounds divine! It's lashing down here.

NSD (because I forgot MIL's birthday card abs sent DH to get it!).

I have a mini glue gun. I love it. For the last dancing show DS was a clown with coloured patches outlined in sequins. That was my first use. Loved it.

Need I once went veggie for a week but I had to give it up pronto because I kept nearly blacking out when I got to the top of the stairs at my office building. Sounds similar to what you're finding.

Hi all had a very busy wend as been working both days but on the plus side that has made it a very cheap wend have managed a non spend wend and I found a £20 note on the grass outside my flat ystd morning!! Was very excited about that, it was a bit soggy from the rain but otherwise looks like a bona fide £20 note - that has never happened to me before!!

Welcome aboard newbies

Am having a quick sit down before all the sorting/tidying/washing/pack lunch making begins!

Ipsos Interesting, if scary for you at the time, thanks. I know on Friday night I was supposed to make spinach and mushroom lasagne, but craved, really craved, 'real' lasagne (for want of a better word) and defrosted some beef mince. We are not massive meat eaters, but I would struggle to give up completely.

We are trying to eat a lot more veggie / fish meals - haven't missed it so far but this weekend with friends over was very meaty so will see how we go this week! This thread moves so fast, sorry if I forget to reply to anyone!

Lilac I hope all goes well tomorrow

Collie £1000 a month would be fab!

L that is a big cut in hours but the folk here will help you cut back where possible so hopefully it won't feel as bad!

Need well done on your returns ;)

Creme UTI symptoms can be lower cramps / tummy pain, burning when you wee, weeing more often, sometimes a temp / feeling nauseous etc. Best see your GP.

Friends went home today, we dropped them to the airport then, in a rare child free afternoon together went for a quick lunch (£23) and a spot of Xmas / other shopping (to be honest I can't be bothered to think through it and cost it up lol but maybe about £70 worth) and a wee coffee.

Need to get DH tyres tomorrow which should be around £200. Weekend ended up quite spend but we had a lovely time :) means we have a lot less left for the month than planned though (esp with the tyres!). Lots of junk food / cheese etc to eat up too as we need to start diets really but I can't bear the waste of getting rid of it... Downton with wine and leftover nibbles it is!

I did put anything unopened / a long date aside for Xmas (crackers for cheese, biscuits, lebekuchen, crisps, X2 bottles of wine, bottle of rum etc) so I guess some of the junk food overspend can at least be carried forward :)

I've got in such a muddle suddenly. I was all excited about my new writing job, but tbh, I was run ragged and only slowly recovering from burnout before the job came along and the extra work is really wearing me down at an astonishing rate. Also I thought it would be easy to get a cleaner and hand over some of my other work but actually most of the work is not work that I can hand over (daily stuff like cooking and tidying toys and putting out the recycling, and doing the parenting, and knowing what's going on with everybody.) By comparison, the actual cleaning of our one small bathroom is hardly anything and would be more than made up for by the extra work of having to talk to a cleaner.

How on earth do people manage to have jobs and children? Or do people who have crappy general health and children with crappy general health not get to have jobs? I can't seem to think of anything that I can outsource even now I have money to pay for it.

Any advice from working folks much appreciated. Sorry, I know this is only partially frugaleering-related.

Good find girlie!

Part of the problem is that ds and I are very susceptible to bugs and so I clean the house like a microbiologist (I did undergraduate microbiology training), but ds and dh are also susceptible to asthma, so I do it using only soap and vinegar (not bleach), which is feasible for me, but would be a lot to ask of a cleaner on £10 an hour. Hum.

blue I know! I'm really excited!

It's going to get chilly at the end of this week so prepare yourselves with fleecy blankets and slipper socks.

Wirral your scheme sounds great. I'm sorry to hear you're not well too. I'm in a similar position and I know if I could just rest I would get better, but I'm champing at the bit to do some paid work to feel like a person again, too. It's frustrating.

I understand just what you mean about picking up stuff. That is exactly what takes so much time for me. My son is 5 and a half, and he is pretty good, but really he wouldn't be able to do a 10th of what needs done. I have to hoover as even tiny amounts of dust cause ds such bad allergies that he stops sleeping.

Our house is too cluttered, but it's all important stuff. The dining room contains the fridge freezer, the tumble dryer, the vacuum cleaner, all the chargers on the floor, two bookcases, a laser printer, a table and a bunch of sundry other things. It makes cleaning very tricky.

We've thought and thought about how to do an extension, but there just isn't a way and we're definitely too knackered to move house.

It's all a bit complicated really.

Thank you for listening. It's helping a lot!

Arghh! Just lost a really long post to Ipsos! Grrr

Basically agreed with wirrals post. We invested in storage for every room and everything has a place. It's so easy to tidy up toys, shoes, books, anything! DH shares the housework with me despite working long hours. It's is house too. There's only me, DH, DS and a cat though. So our house doesn't get that messy.

Clutter = dust = allergies.

Even if you wipe down your belongings and store them in a clean box it'll help with the allergy problem.

If you are more prone to bugs etc then have you tried using hand gel regularly? I have auto immune disorders and have a tangibly crap immune system so I use the hand gel often. Perhaps you should invest in natural defences like tee tree, lemons and manuka honey.

I recommend Floradix too. really helps on painful lethargic days

Oh I'm also asthmatic. Storage changed my life! Have you got a decent vacuum cleaner?

Thanks for going the extra mile to post twice collie. I appreciate it.

I'll have a think and see if I can do even more on storage. We're pretty good that way tbh. It's just putting the things back on the shelves that takes the time. I suppose it's worse now that the evenings are dark and we're stuck inside to play of course. :-)

I did find hand sanitiser was great but then my health visitor was really mean about it and said I would make ds neurotic with it. I'm totally confused now. Don't know whether it's better for ds to be worried by constant illness or hand santiser.

Everything was so much better in the summer though. Maybe I should just hibernate?

I think our vacuum is okay thanks collie. It's a roomba and as long as I use it then ds is fine.

Good grief. An ant just crawled up my computer screen. Some divine force is taking the mickey now.