Blog

Last week I was able to buy £42.69 worth of food for £24.02. I am not an ‘extreme couponer’ that is, someone who trawls through internet sites to find coupons for food and household items. There are some people who do this to save money but it needs time and effort and obviously a keen interest in getting bargains and saving money.

I buy from a site called ‘Approved Food’ where food is a good deal cheaper as are cleaning items and some household goods. For some time now experts have told us that the ‘best before date’ on foodstuffs is only a guide whereas the ‘use by date’ should be followed. Approved Foods sells various commodities at a cheaper price. This is possible because some of the items that have ‘best before date’.  can be safely eaten. Each item on the website has a best before date so checks can be made before goods are purchased. Household cleaning items I find a good buy as they are effective for longer than the given date. 

There is a minimum order of around £22 and a £3 delivery charge and goods are delivered straight to your door. Obviously using goods in this way prevents a lot of unwanted items ending up in landfill. 

In our throwaway society recycling and saving the planet is becoming of greater importance. We have recycling bins of various colours, in some areas councils provide food buckets and we can’t help but see adverts acknowledging the need for saving the planet and recycling. With many charity shops closed at the moment avenues for donating goods are closed to us at the moment. One company will buy books, CDs, videos etc. Amounts paid are quite small but it is one step more in sharing goods and keeping things out of landfill. Try Music Magpie for yourself and also Ziffit — details online. 

While I was putting this together some incidents from my childhood came into my mind. One Christmas all six of us got a shared present of a rocking horse. We loved Dobbin and in our imagination he took us far away from Glasgow. When it was Hallowe’en there were always masks for sale in the likes of Woolworths (though they were known as false faces) and I remember my mother would buy us one. One year one of my brothers wanted a false face with a moustache but these were more expensive so my mother didn’t buy him one of those. Instead good old Dobbin helped out. My mother snipped off the end of Dobbin’s tail and that became the moustache for the false face. 

I don’t know if that would be called upcycling or repurposing or whatever new buzz word  is now in use but we all know how resourceful our mother’s generation could be.
 
As for my brother, he was delighted with his Hallowe’en false face.