End of Month update

February has seen some large-ish spends, but we've also achieved something along our journey.

- The £80 overpayment took a month off the total term, and also has reduced the daily interest by 3p. Not a lot you may think, but when you add this up it really does count over the years, and the lower the balance, the less the interest will be.

- I've withdrawn £100 from paypal, sold one of DD's old toys in the local paper.

A good month.

Buying in Bulk

There are a few things I have learnt that it's OK to buy in bulk, especially when they're on offer. Your main dilemma may be where to store them.
Each time I see the following on offer, I always pick one or two up.

• Bin Bags
• Washing up liquid
• Washing powder
• Fabric softener
• Loo roll
• Noodles
• Toothpaste
• Hand soap
• Shower gel

Morrisons have had a long running offer of their own brand shower gel and liquid hand soap on offer for 4 for £3 for ages now. I have a nice little stash in the bathroooms and that way I am guaranteed a shower without realising someone else has used the last of the shower gel and I am left with nothing.

Mortgage Free efforts over the weekend

The last few days has seen

- £80 overpaid to the mortgage. This has knocked a month off the final balance which is always a great encouragement to keep going.

- 3 ebay sales parcelled and ready to be posted today

- around 20 new photos taken for ebay listings

- 3 items listed on the local free ad boards. Two have resulted in enquiries.

- £6.27 arrived from Topcashback and a further £35.35 claimed.

Not a bad weekends work.

How Much?

Today is payday, so a trip to the supermarket is in order. As I was wandering around, I realised that certain things I would have wanted to buy were on offer in the local Morrisons near me, so I refrained from buying them in Sainsburys and vowed to save the money by making an extra trip later.

My trolley which usually looks filled to bursting, was looking very lonely when I got to the checkout. Three large taken from home bags of shopping filled and a few items not bagged, but I still managed to spend £48.50 on 33 items!

I was almost horrified, as everything I bought was weighed up against the cheaper alternative, or an offer that was available if any. The ONLY treat item in the trolley was a bag of garlic prawns for £2.99. Everything else was staples for the freezer or cupboards and I got no where near a weeks shop for that money.

Slow Cooker chicken curry

I am trying to use my slow cooker more on busy days, and when I saw the Morphy Richards £4 slow cooker challenge, I knew just the recipe to try.

We love curry in our house, and I have been playing around with curry in the slow cooker for a while. This version usually fills us all up and comes out tasting lovely.

- 4 chicken thigh fillets (£2)

- 1kg potatoes chopped really small ( 50p) based on 2.5kg at 99p in the basics range

- 1 tin chopped tomatoes (33p)

- 5 mushrooms (20p) based on 4p each

- 1tsp curry powder / 1tsp cumin / 1tsp coriander (from store cupboard)

- rice to serve (30p)  based on basics range at 60p for 1kg white rice

total cost = £3.33

One tip I can give you is to chop the potatoes up really small as they take a long time to cook. I usually find this curry is perfect on high for about 5 hours or low for 8 hours. You just have to cook the rice before you're ready to serve.

Before

After

Overall taste is lovely. I would probably add some green beans or other vegetable to taste for overall appearance.

Home Grown

In an event to save some cash this year, I am going to start my planting in the garden using seeds left over from last year.

So we'll be starting off with some lettuce which always grow well, carrots, which I'll be planting in my new deep troughs my Dad made for me at the end of last summer, spring onions which I usually just grown in a large pot and I'm going to give beetroot a go this year as well in my troughs.

I have one strawberry plant left from last year that I'm hoping will revive itself again this year. It's currently in a hanging basket, but if I can offset the funds through ebay sales etc then I may treat myself to a strawberry planter as well.

Clearing out

It's amazing what a bit of sun and a free listing weekend on Ebay can do for your motivation.

I managed to list six items on Ebay over the weekend, which was impressive seeing as I worked ALL weekend. These were higher value items so hoping it was worth it. The lower value can be sought out and listed over this coming week.

In the garden we have lots of left over plastic play balls from when DD was younger so this morning, I have tackled the top of the mountain and cleaned, bagged and listed 200 balls on my local free paper site. Hopefully this will generate some much needed funds towards the final goal of our journey.