Prepping on a Low Budget

[AlohaMolly]

The prepping boards have been extremely useful to me over the last year, but I feel a bit lost as to what to do next.

I’m in the tourism industry on furlough and also in one of the devolved nations. I’m on a low wage anyway, but feel I’ll be on furlough till the very end and then either made redundant or struggle for business until at least easter 2021. I want to continue my prepping but have to balance the cost of replenishing stocks/building supplies with continuing to save for what will probably be a hard winter.

Does anyone want to join me for a low budget, long term prepping thread?

Good idea about selling stuff to raise extra funds. I need to have a clear about but it's pretty difficult while trying to work full time and having three kids at home! Perhaps need set myself some weekend goals...

Oooh chub rub shorts! Brilliant idea - I’ll have a look. I did wear my 3/4 length exercise leggings out under a midi dress yesterday and it was just a bit hot and I felt like a tool when it was windy

I was selling off my stuff via eBay/FB for a few months before lockdown so I largely don’t have clutter or excess to sell. I am hitting the survey sites a bit harder recently though and I’m going to use the vouchers as amazon ones to stock up on bulk items. Last night I bought 1200 typhoo tea bags for around £11 and a box of mini love heart sweets for a fiver - they’ll go in my ‘pantry!’

Some great tips here.

My tip is.... Iceland!!!

The shop of course! They deliver free if you spend over £35. They have loads if veg, fresh meats, eggs 10 for £1, tins etc, it's not just all frozen.

And where I am I can always get a delivery slot in a day or 2.

Also iceland have loads of treats for the hubby with the sweet tooth

I’d love Iceland but they won’t deliver here!! Is it worth me biting the bullet and making the trip? It’s in the same town as Lidl where I normally shop anyway...

Have a look on their website at the prices. I find them good value for most things but I like my brands. I know its daft but I like sticking to the brands I know, like kellogs etc. I don't drink or smoke .

If it was me, I'd get all my cleaning stuff, pasta and veg in lidl and go to Iceland for brands I like, also greggs steak bakes.

I use Iceland for ease when I don't fancy going out but it off very expensive compared to Lidl and Aldi. Pizzas are £1 but 80p in Aldi and Lidl. It's always cheaper to go to the also for me but sinner of Iceland stuff my kids love. We go to the food warehouse as you get much bigger packs than you can for delivery.... 1.2kg of big chicken poppers for £5 and my kids wolf them down in a wrap with salad and mayo. I rate Iceland fresh chicken wings too. And their extra survival microwave meals for emergency.

I am slowly building my stash back up. I'm supposed to be shielding but am going out occasionally and being very careful. I need to make sure I have enough food to last 3-5 weeks at any one time as I get sick really easy. My larder is coming on but my freezer needs organising and refilling. For me that's farm foods frozen chicken fillets £15 for 5 and also Aldi or Lidl mince, sausages, chicken thighs, bacon, blocks of cheese, butter etc.

My kids are loving making their own pizza after I got a stand mixer and it's actually cheaper than buying them frozen. I use half a bag of strong flour, teaspoon of yeast, teaspoon of sugar, teaspoon of salt and a glut of olive oil. Then just Passata , tomato paste and herbs for the sauce, whatever toppings are in the fridge and as bit of grated cheese. I can feed all of us for £4 and it keeps the kids busy.

I think the key is going to be shopping around isn’t it? It’s important to me to try and rely on supermarkets as little as possible and set my groceries up so I have to leave as little as possible as well. I get a fruit/veg box delivered fortnightly and it has an essentials add on too, so it’s £25 for what I feel is a huge amount of food. Milkman delivers, I go out for eggs from a local farm but get 30 at a time for a fiver.

Iceland appeals because like the PP above, DP likes branded treats so while Lidl is cheap, I can’t buy own brand stuff as he won’t eat it. I made my first trip to farmfoods last time and picked up frozen chicken fillets and some ice lollies, but I need to go to the range this time too for a salt grinder, so I think I’ll see what big packets of stuff they have there, too.

Can I recommend Theo Cooks on Instagram, too? He does live cookalongs Monday, Wednesday and Friday and technically they’re cooking with kids. DS used to join in but has lost interest now, but he’s done quite a few recipes that I’ve repeated because they were quick, cheap, easy and tasty. Flatbread pizzas are ace!

Dh makes a lot of things from scratch, flatbread pizza is one of them!

Before this virus, I always shopped around and got the best deals I could
Now I'm trying to avoid the shops, that's why I've started getting iceland deliveries. I know some of the stuff I buy is more expensive than lidl or aldi, but I have health anxiety and I'm avoiding the shops at all costs. So my compromise is iceland, good prices on most things, brands I like but a restriction on what I can buy as not so much choice.

I've found Iceland deliveries brilliant too. I used them a lot pre-lockdown and couldn't get a delivery slot for a while, but things seem to be almost back to normal now I think they've added loads of delivery slots, taken on plenty of new people etc.

Is there any way of buying the non-branded stuff and using it in a way your DP won't notice @AlohaMolly?! Admittedly probably not with a can of Coke but with any of his other treats? Or just giving him a budget for his treats and saying buy what you want, but we have no more than x amount to spend, it's up to you whether you get 20 treats for that or 2. DP is awful though for scoffing leftovers or entire meals if not watched, I completely sympathise with that, it's very annoying when I've bought something to last us a few days and he shovels it in absentmindedly

There are loads of great recipes to make your food go further on MSE here (the whole site is brilliant, but that's the link I had stored), here and I second @RhubarbTea's suggestion of Jack Monroe. I know she's not everyone's cup of tea on here but she has some amazing ideas for stretching your budget a bit further for tasty meals.

Poundland (in store or online) is good for branded treats, shampoo & conditioner, craft stuff for kids and gardening stuff... I don't mind so much if the DTs break a £1 raspberry bush as I would if it was more expensive!

I've bought my DTs massive bundles of clothes via Facebook as people were getting rid of loads, helps them not go through them as quickly if we can rotate a lot.

We use the library a lot, the app when it's closed or actual books for the DC when it finally reopens!

Has anyone tried Approved Food? I haven't given it a go yet but have heard good things about it...

After this weeks shop, I feel like my dry stores are back up to pre lockdown level. I would like more coke in stock and another ‘treat’ box, but otherwise I’m ok.

DP has started an Etsy shop for woodwork bits and I’m going to start mine back up soon - I’ve got a knitting one that I usually just piss about with, but I’m thinking of trialling face covering snood type things with a pocket to insert a filter or another cloth layer for the winter.

DH saw my stores that I had in the spare bedroom wardrobe last night, as I was checking them ahead of doing a stores shop this week to rebuild. He was slightly shocked, he had thought dd was exaggerating about it. But he’s been quite happy to benefit from it. And I have been running down things.

I need to get some things again though - tinned tomatoes and passata, for example. And ketchup and mayonnaise. So that will be a solo shopping trip tonight.

How do you keep track of yours? I keep trying to a written inventory but my freezers always seem to complicated for me...

I had to reorganise mine to find out what I have got. Only part way through reorganising though. Children are away this weekend so will manage some some stuff hopefully.

@HuggedTheRedwoods

If you dont want to give up your dresses/skirts you can get little shorts type things that protect the inner thighs. No brand to recommend yet as I only read about these recently but google 'chub rub shorts' and you'll see quite a few.

Snag do the best chub rub shorts, they are low stock at the moment on some sizes, but worth checking out. I have tried loads of different brands, and they are the most comfortable on me. They are essentially opaque tights made thigh length. If you have an old pair of tights it might be worth trying cutting them off just above the knee and see if it works, they might roll up if you cut them too short, but have a go.

I've also tried cutting leggings off just above the knee, that works too, Some might prefer cotton leggings to nylon tights on a hot day.

And it appears our summer is over!! Back to pouring rain up here in Wales

I think I’ve reached the point of stores now where I’m back to pre lockdown levels in terms of dry stock. I’ve focused more on flours than tins this time round, although I’ve got plenty of tinned tomatoes. Flours and sugars are what I’ve focused on this time due to seemingly those being difficult to get!

I’m slowly trying to rejig/rethink my freezers now because it turns out we don’t actually eat meals from the freezer often. Ive got an under the counter freezer in the shed which I split into frozen veg/meat from leftovers or veg that I’ve needed to use up. The middle drawer was/is frozen leftovers of actual meals and then the small bottom drawer was/is ice lollies and bakery stuff like bread/tea cakes. I think I would like to halve the number of meals in the middle drawer in favour of more space for bread and veg, as having frozen veg has been amazing when I can’t be bothered cooking! I definitely underestimated how much bread DP gets through, so I need to keep more space for that. I think as we go into winter, The ice lollies won’t be as in demand but it’s not like they go off is it?

In the house we have a fridge freezer and it was more of the same really, but now I’m trying to change that up. Top drawer has a massive bag of oven chips which I never bought before, but we had six or seven weeks of no chip shop open(!) and I just can’t be arsed making wedges anymore! I keep a bag of frozen onions in there too from my stock.

So moving my focus away from food... still keeping an eye out for bulk buy sweets/chocolate deals which I’ll build up over time. I’m going to put time into researching decent stuff for DS, now. He’s just 4 and due to go to reception in September but it looks as though it’ll be part time at best? I was an early years teacher and am confident I can keep him on track but I’ve never really bought stuff for ‘school’ as we’ve just played. I’m now looking for activity books/maths/phonics etc, specifically wipe clean ones. I picked up two great ones in home bargains I think but only one was wipe clean so he’s raced through that!

I've been following the preppers board with interest since Brexit and have massively benefited from all the advice. I'm just about to start trying to grow veg in our tiny back yard, which is concreted over. I'm about to buy a ten gallon fabric potato barrel from eBay but just wondering if anyone can advise on the yield?

DP is saying there's no point in growing anything as we can't sustain ourselves from it, but I want to try regardless.

Next purchase is an extra freezer for the back yard shed; that's our weak spot, not having the extra space to store frozen food.

@FloggingMoll I used an old supermarket bag for life to grow spuds. I put some drainage holes & stones at the bottom. Then I filled with soil & planted old, halved potatoes which had sprouted tubers. It seems to be OK atm, lots of leady green shoots.

@IloveParmaViolets Sounds fab, I did see that other posters had some similar. How many spuds do you reckon you'll get from a bag? Guess it's totally down to chance (I'm not good without absolutes, it's why I like prepping!).

Am trying to pay off some of my smaller debts in the next month or two, to try and clear the decks, but it's bloody tough going.

Flogging same here re debt. I don’t have masses but it takes up over half my income. Trying to snowball payments and save at the same time...

I’ve got two bananas on the turn, what would you do? I don’t really want to do banana bread or freeze them for ice cream...

@AlohaMolly I've got a handful of credit cards that have relatively low credit limits; I've predictably run them straight up by buying necessities and then got stuck with the monthly payments. As DDs nursery is closed they're thankfully not charging us fees so I have that money freed up temporarily to do something with. It means I've been able to upgrade DD to a toddler bed and pay off some credit cards.

I'm very nervous about the future of the job market and financial prepping is my way of coping with it all.