Upgrading from Harrods to Ikea

This post about hand-me-down furniture is one of the most popular posts I've ever published and I didn't even write it myself. It fits in with my snobbish notions of interior design having once read that the aristocracy don't buy furniture, they inherit it.

Harrods, London 1974

Today marks the end of an era as I sold my dining room table after 20 years. It wasn't a new table when I acquired it. It came from my friends N and T when they upgraded. Her mother bought it for them in a Harrods sale when they got married 41 years ago and it came with them when they moved to Jerusalem.

I always got a kick out of the fact that the table came from Harrods. I usually buy a pencil in Harrods just to get the bag. However, the truth is that it fit better in my old apartment which had a wider and longer dining area. This apartment really needs a different shape table. With the arrival of Ikea in Israel, a new table has been on my wish list for a couple of years now. Can you call it upgrading from Harrods to Ikea? I think you can.

The table has gone to a young couple of newlyweds who are looking forward to entertaining family and friends on shabbat and festivals. I hope they enjoy 20 years of great meals and wonderful company around the table just as N & T did , and then I did. And then they can pass it on.

Meanwhile I haven't actually got the money to buy the new table yet so I'm using this vintage Ikea kitchen table that I was given by friends when they moved to a smaller apartment in Jerusalem. It also came with them from England where it had been the table in their morning room in Liverpool since some time in the 1990s. The first Ikea shop in the UK opened in Warrington in 1987. They tell me that the table was bought from Ikea in Warrington a few years later.

Vintage Ikea, Warrington 1990s

I'm in no hurry to purchase a new table. I'm enjoying the space and the lighter atmosphere of the white table. Did I tell you that I'm a bit obsessed with the Tiny House movement and Minimalism? I watch TEDx talks about less being more and I'm fascinated by people who can fit everything they own into two boxes. Whilst I still want a separate living room and a bedroom for each of us (no climbing up ladders to a loft space) and a fully plumbed shower room and toilet is essential, I find myself looking around to see what else I can sell or give away.

A-Z Of Time And Money Saving Household Systems (Part 2, N-Z)

You can read A-M here.

14. Nutrition. Real food, proper sit-down meals, smaller portions, no junk, drink water. It's not rocket science although a number of people have managed to expand this advice into whole books and industries. If you do this you will save loadsa money on food, fewer sick days, doctors and medicine. You will also be more energised for all aspects of your life, more efficient, happier, and spend less money on clothes because you'll look great in everything you already have.

15. Offspring. Your children need systems too. Children with structure in their days get more done and do better than those without. Encourage your children to create a daily and weekly routine to include their homework, hobbies, social activities, exercise, computer time, music practice, and enough sleep. For younger children do it yourself or together and put it on the fridge (with a sticker-reward element if necessary). You don't have to include everything and over-schedule them. For us the important items (which are the ones that meet the most resistance) are homework, brushing teeth, hair washes, and reading practice (in two languages).

16. Places. Everything you own has to have a place in your home where it lives. If it doesn't have a designated place it will be all over the shop getting in the way, looking messy, and ultimately getting lost. This applies to post, hats/gloves/umbrellas, remote controls, miscellaneous stationary and home office equipment, gift wrapping items, stores of unused toiletries for eventual use or regifting, old magazines, glasses and sunshades... in short, everything. And of course you need to regularly put everything in it's place.

17. Queen for a day. Time for yourself to do something fun, has to be built into the system. It could be once a month or once a week. It could be a coffee or lunch with a friend, it could be a cinema or concert outing, it could be a day shopping or at a spa, a monthly mani-pedi or a massage. It doesn't have to be a week in Paris though that would be nice. Just something to make you feel relaxed and good about yourself. Factor it in according to your budget. If it's a walk in the woods and a picnic by the lake that's fine. If it's a gin and tonic and an uninterrupted dvd that's also fine. If you plan it it will be money saving because the alternative is to reach the end of your tether and go on a spontaneous splurge.

18. Rainy Day. Even if you regularly finish the month in minus, you need to find a system for saving for a rainy day. I put the minimal amount allowable into a savings account by monthly automatic transfer and forget about it. There's hardly any interest atm but when I have a reasonable sum I'll review the best place to put it and move it if necessary. It's a pay yourself first system even though I could often do with the money for other things. One of my friends started collecting 2 shekel coins. Whenever she had one in her purse she put it in a jar. When she had 1,000 2 shekel pieces that would be a short holiday for her and her children (about 350GBP). Other friends have occasional work which is outside their regular income and put that money into savings. Another system is to look at your expenses and see where you can shave off savings - and of course save that money. Sell unwanted items on Ebay or your local Buy, Sell, Swap group on fb (start one if you can't find one). Set yourself challenges for furnishing a small emergency fund (new fridge), a larger fall back fund (temporary unemployment of up to 6 months), and a long term plan (new house, pension). These are but a few saving systems I've heard about, there are plenty more I'm sure. You might need to be creative but don't try sleeping in Heathrow aiport and having someone set up a Go Fund Me for you. It's been done and it backfired.

19. Shopping list. Have one on your computer with all the household items you use regularly. Print it out once a week and tick off things as you run out. Before you go shopping check it against your menu plan for the coming week and add any special extras such as birthday cake decorations or a gift to take to a party.

20. Timetable. You can go take a look at the FlyLady. This is timetabling in the extreme. She has Control Journals for every inch of your house for every hour of the day, every day of the week, every month, every season, every occasion, and every year. You could schedule the life out of your life. If you search You Tube for Control Journals there are hilarious and excruciatingly boring at the same time, vlogs of people showing you their giant files of lists and routines in great detail. Having said that, it makes sense to schedule tasks outside of your regular work for housework, accounts, mending, cooking, gardening, quality time, hobbies, etc... You can take it as far as you like from jotting things down in your diary to the full control journal lifestyle. Things will get done and you won't have to throw money at projects that you could have finished yourself but now need help with because the time ran out.

21. Underwear. We had 6 years worth of socks and knickers (well maybe only 4 years on the knickers) stuffed into drawers in DD's bedroom. I also tend to keep socks, knickers and bras way past their usefulness. what's more, I always buy a packet of knickers or socks in M&S (or Primark for DD) on our yearly visit to England. So the underwear mountains just keep growing. For DD the ridiculous thing is that the older items don't even fit her anymore and for me they're just worn and holey. Go through your underwear once a year and free up space. You might also be surprised to find enough good pairs of socks/tights/knickers so that you actually don't need to buy more for a while. Throw out the tired things.

22. Vegeburgers and kugels. Any leftover vegetables, pulses, and grains can be made into vegeburgers (or if you bake it in one big dish it's a kugel). Just saute your vegetables if necessary, soak your pulses and cook them if necessary, and mix everything up with eggs and any grains (rice, polenta, flour, breadcrumbs), or mashed potato for binding. Season and make your mixture into patties for vegeburgers or turn into a well oiled dish and bake in the oven until golden brown on top for kugels.

23. Wardrobe. You need to be able to see what you have and it needs to be folded ready to wear. Otherwise you'll be in a perpetual nothing-to-wear cycle of buying new clothes and sending them to Narnia at the back of the wardrobe. Last year Project 333 was popular. You choose 33 items to wear for 3 months. This cuts down your choices but, if all 33 items coordinate, you actually save time and have more choice. You change your 33 items with each season for weather conditions and variety. The great thing about this is that you don't actually have to throw anything out, just pack it away for the season. If an unexpected skiing trip lands in your lap (as it does - to some but not to me) you can of course dig out your skiing gear for the holiday. Same for scuba diving, hop picking, and volunteering in Africa - your 33 items do not have to cover every eventuality.

24. Xtras. There are so many more systems that work for people. Here are some I can think of. If you have experience with any of these I'd love to read about it in a comment. Couponing, bartering or swapping services such as gardening or babysitting, pot luck or contribution dinners and parties, car pooling, entering prize contests, upcycling, swap meetings, thrift shop shopping, house swap holidays, staycations, camping, planning for future events by gift buying in advance when you see something on offer, vegetable growing, and store cupboard kitchens.

25. Yearly Goals. The years go by and those years when you didn't have a baby, graduate, move house or get a new job, can be lost in eras of minimal achievement. If the word 'goals' scares you, call them intentions or aspiritations. You can do it yearly but it's also good to have a system of monthly or even weekly goals. It's true that 'how you spend your days is how you live your life.' Don't over extend yourself or be unrealistic but it is important to know where you want to be heading or you might never get anywhere. What a waste of the years that would be. Five and Ten Year plans are also helpful. Mind maps are a fun way to do this with coloured pens but lists work just as well.

25. Zzzzz. You need to make sure you're getting enough sleep or every other system will work at half effiency levels. Work backwards from the time you have to get up in the morning and make sure you get what you need - you know what your optimum number of hours is. If you like to read in bed, go to bed half an hour earlier to allow for this. Leave your tech devices in another room.

A-Z Of Time And Money Saving Household Systems (Part 1, A-M)

1. Accounts. Have files or folders, a drawer or a shelf for all your household bills and documents. Keep it contained in one place. Have a pending basket where you throw in papers as they arrive to be dealt with later. 'Later' needs to be a specific time in the week when you sit down and clear the pending box, pay the bills, answer letters that need answering, and file everything into the appropriate file/folder. Schedule this into your week, it shouldn't take longer than an hour tops. It can be done in front of the tv on Sunday night or at 6am one morning if you are an early riser. The golden rules are to keep it contained and regulalry keep on top of it.

2. Bedtime. You can't make the children go to sleep and it's often frustrating to have them messing about when you need the evening to be child-free to work or have time to yourself. Do your bit of the routine - supervise homework, enforce music practice, serve supper, de-lice hair, supervise baths and clean up the bathroom afterwards, read stories, put out clean clothes for the morning, etc... And then set a curfew for 8.30pm. All children have to be in their rooms. They can read or play quietly but they have to stay in their rooms. I met someone last week who had his children doing this until they were 16 although I don't think he was still supervising baths.

3. Cooking. Prepare everything in double proportions, make in two dishes and freeze. You then have one week on and one week off cooking. Or alternate days of cooking (using different dishes from the freezer not the same food two days running). You may have to add the pasta, potatoes, or the salad but the soup, sauce, or main dish will be ready. Just remember to take it out of the freezer in the morning.

4. Declutter. It's obvious that the less rubbish you have, even if it's treasured rubbish, the less you have to look after, the less storage furniture you have to clean around, and the easier it is to find and get at what you want quickly and efficiently.

5. Evening Meals. Have a loose weekly menu. For example, Mondays - pasta, Tuesdays - pizza, Wednesday - bangers, beans, and mash (or shepherds pie), Thursdays - fish and chips (or fish fingers depending your age and budget), Fridays - chicken, rice, and vegetables, Saturdays - soup and salad based meal, Sundays - toasted sandwiches, pancakes, omelets or French toast and leftovers. It gives you a starting point and then you can add whatever sauces and vegetables you have in the house. A clearing up rota is good. Or at least a help with the clearing up rota for younger children. In our house it's DD's turn every night #onlychildproblems

6. Flowers. Don't have cut flowers in the house. They last for a week tops and then you have to throw them out and wash the vase. Pot plants last for years, they are less messy, and only need watering regularly. I love flowers but I keep them outside on the balcony or as flowering plants in the house.

7. Guilt. If you don't feel up to doing any of it one day, don't do it. Use your time profitably to catch up on sleep or tv programmes you wanted to see but missed. Do not waste valuable leisure time feeling guilty about it, even if it is unplanned leisure time.

8. Housework. Only clean half the house each week. Bedrooms and bathrooms one week, living rooms and kitchen the next. This requires a certain amount of cleaning up as you go and toilets and sinks will need a once over in between times, but most rooms can survive two weeks between cleans.

9. Ice-cream. We live in a hot climate and the kids want ice-cream every day. They don't get an ice-cream every day but it is hard to say no when you're walking home past the shop and it's 30 degrees C. I have two strategies. The first is to buy a box of cones and a tub of ice cream for the freezer (I could make my own but I don't). This is way cheaper than buying something on a stick or in a cone from the shop. The second idea is to buy small, cheap children's yogurts and freeze them with a plastic spoon stuck in though the lid. A quick once under the cold tap and the frozen yogurt cleanly comes out of the tub. DD can have a frozen yogurt every day if she wants - it's a yogurt!

10. Jobs. Everyone who lives in the house should have jobs. DD is 6 1/2 and her jobs include unpacking the 48-roll packet of toilet paper into the cupboard in the bathroom and making pyramids of the rest on the shelf behind each toilet. She also waters the plants on the balcony every day in the summer. We're working on tidying up her stuff before the bedtime curfew. Actualy we're still working on the bedtime curfew idea.

11. Kitchen Closure. I have a friend who is one of six children and five of them boys. His mother used to clean up the ktchen after supper each night and lock the door. They had a fruit bowl and some nosh, drinks, and tea/coffee making facilities in the morning room (sounds posh but it just meant a separate room for the table instead of an eat-in kitchen) but the kitchen was closed. With eight mouths to feed their mother needed to know what food she had in the fridge and that it was not going to be eaten late at night by teenage boys with hollow legs. She was also able to clean up and know that she would have a clean kitchen to come down to the next morning. You don't have to go to the extreme of actually locking the door but a Kitchen Closed policy has its merits. (You could temporarily open it for a 9pm tea break if you eat supper early.)

12. Laundry. You could do up to 10 loads of laundry in one day, squash it all onto your clothes horses/line to dry and/or tumble dry in the machine. However, you then need to iron everything. If you take the laundry slowly and smooth out the wet clothes on the clothes horse or hang tops on the line on hangers (pegged of course), it will dry without any need for ironing (with a little help from body heat). It may take a few days to get to the bottom of the basket but hours spent ironing are eliminated.

13. Muffins. DD has to take a 10 o'clock snack to school every day. This is for most children a sandwich and some fruit. It's a leftover from the days when people got up a 6 and had their main midday meal at about 2.30 when they came home from school. We live oppposite the school so, though school starts at 8, we get up at 7.30 and there is no time for breakfast. Ten o'clock snack is actually eaten at 9.40 so it is essentially her breakfast. She gets a hot lunch at 1pm. Only she doesn't like sandwiches. So at half the price of buying unfrosted cupcakes in the supermarket and with twice the goodness (not scientifically calculated), I make a batch of muffins every couple of weeks. I make it with silan (date syrup) instead of some of the sugar, I grate in some carrots and courgette, and if anyone asks it is absolutely not a cupcake (which they are not allowed to bring to school), it's a healthy(ish) muffin. This works for us but the point is, a batch of muffins in the freezer are a cheap and healthy snack and they take only about 10 minutes to defrost.

You can read N-Z here.

A Week From The Store Cupboard

Everyone here is winding down their store cupboards before Pesach when we eat special foods and nothing from the previous weeks. We are going away and I would like to not spend any more money this March. So for this week we will be living out of the store cupboard, fridge and freezer. No buying any more food until we leave (when I may have to pick up some things for the journey).

I last went shopping on Monday. We have firm (and 3 overripe) tomatoes, cucumbers, and a small cabbage, 4 avocados, about 12 small potatoes and some onions. 6 oranges and 2 apples. One litre of milk (or slightly less actually), 200g of butter, 2 tubs of tomato puree, 9 eggs, about 300g of cheese, 2 x 250g tubs of cottage cheese, an assortment of frozen vegetables, one block of tofu, 4 frozen corn and tofu shnitzels and a full bag of frozen vegetarian sausages, a big box of cornflakes, 7 pittas in the freezer, 4 jars of pasta sauce, 2 tins of tuna, and unlimited dry groceries (oats, pasta, lentils, sugar, etc...).

Here are my cupcakes. There are chocolate-chips inside.
(I know you know what cupcakes look like.)

I just used 2 eggs and 150g of butter (and flour, sugar, etc) to make 30 mini choc-chip cupcakes. DD will take one of these to school with half a pitta and cheese every day for breakfast which they have at 9.40. She then gets a homemade (by the afternoon program lady) meal of meat or fish with a carb and vegetables for lunch.

I have coffee for breakfast and leftovers for lunch, and I am dieting.

Today (Friday) - It's already 4.30 and for supper tonight we will have tomato and lentil soup (made with the onions, overripe tomatos, tom puree, and lentils), roast potatoes, avocado/tom/cuc salad, and 2 corn shnitzels (DD).

Saturday morning - Me: Coffee, DD: cornflakes, cupcake, apple juice, an apple and an orange (whatever she wants from that selection).

Saturday lunch - Cabbage salad, Tomato/cucumber salad, potato latkes and cottage cheese, cooked green soy beans (endamame?).

Saturday evening - Soup, homemade felafel and salad.

Sunday (a school day) supper - pasta and pasta sauce from the freezer, salad, cottage cheese (DD prefers the cottage cheese to the pasta sauce). Fruit for desert (apple and orange).

Monday supper - stirfry vegetables and tofu with ptitim (orzo), salad, cottage cheese. An orange

Tuesday supper -  Tuna salad in pitta, salad, roast ptotatos (I dice the potatoes into small cubes and they take 20 minutes in a hot oven with a bit of oil and salt). An orange.

Wednesday supper - Soup made from all leftover vegetables, vegetarian sausages, roast potatoes, salad. An orange.

Thursday supper - Leftover soup with any open pasta or orzo, salad, 2 corn shnitzels (DD).

Friday brunch - Vegetarian sausages, roast ptotatoes, salad (DD), Soup and omelet with cheese and onion (Me).

For the journey - Tuna salad in pitta. Cupcakes. I will buy some crisps for DD, and a couple of apples - we'll be in London by dinnertime.

Not very adventurous or exciting - I could make vegetarian shepherd's pie with a lentil 'meat' bottom layer, or tuna potato cakes, pancakes and silan, a potato or vegetable kugel, but there's no point because DD likes nothing better than her salad, some 'chips' and some cottage cheese for supper.

Let's see if I can manage this. I'll let you know on Thursday.

Chosen Poverty

Following my post last week about not being frugal for frugal's sake, and I thank all of you who wrote lovely supportive comments which were much appreciated, another issue came up which I want to address.

Whilst I write about trying to save every penny in any which way I can and how I cannot afford many of the things I used to take for granted, my kind of 'poverty' is not real poverty. Real poverty is when you have nothing, you have no money for food or fuel, you live in less than desirable housing conditions, your children are suffering, and you can see no way out of these circumstances. Thank God none of this applies to me.

My circumstances are at worst, sustainable, and at best, temporary. There are a number of very good reasons to choose a temporary poverty. I would even recommend it if quality of life is more important to you than standard of living.

1. A well paying job might take up all your time and you prefer to be flexible while your children are young so that you can be available for school events, volunteering, cooking healthy meals, home-making, helping others, or if the children need a sick day.

2. The logistical organisation and stress that might go with a high-powered career is not worth the money to you and your family.

3. You prefer to be happy finding lesser paid work than to be unhappy in a strict rule-laden work environment. Life's not always all about amassing the most wealth in financial terms. Sometimes it is of course, but at other times you may owe it to your children and/or partner to have a happy parent and/or partner.

4. It may be that a few years of financial struggle while you find and set up alternative sources of income are ultimately worth the investment.

5. Sometimes after a massive effort to put yourself in a good place such as buying a home, paying off debt, finishing a course of study, or paying for IVF, you need to stop peddling so hard for a while and just appreciate how far you've come. Maybe you are gathering your strength for the next big project or maybe you're done. Whichever it is, if you can't take some time to enjoy the fruits of your labour then what's the point of it all?

6. Even if you have a sufficient income, you might strive to live on as little as possible day to day as this allows you to save for expensive things that are more important to you. This may be travel, education, your house, or even amassing a good pension. Each to his own. As one very supportive comment on my last post said: it's about using what you have in a way that best works for you. It's about satisfying your wants as well as your needs without going into debt.

There have been a few worrying moments over the past five years. Realizing that the good income I had prior to motherhood was no longer viable with the time available as a single mother was big shock. I've had to rethink my whole work situation and at times I struggled with it. Only last year I thought I'd have to sell my apartment and downgrade as I couldn't afford to live here. This too passed and we got through it somehow albeit with a lot of tears and sleepless nights.

Now my daughter is 5 and everything is easier. Opportunities are opening up that were impossible to consider with a baby or a toddler. I am no longer struggling or stressed out about it. I am juggling, budgeting, and planning but this empowers me rather than oppresses me. It's a challenge for sure but I'm thriving on it.

Bottom line - I don't plead poverty (anymore), I choose frugality as a tool towards a happy and successful life. I celebrate that I have the choice.

Frugal For Frugal's Sake? No

Apart from writing some blog posts about being frugal, I also belong to facebook group about living frugally in Israel and another about being financially savvy in Israel. And every so often in real life I get invited to an event which I turn down because my babysitting budget runs to about one outing a month, less if the outing involves travel and a wedding present. I think it's safe to say that my frugality is pretty much out there for all to see.

On the other hand, I seem to live a nice life and we do things, go places, and acquire stuff. I'm sometimes asked how this can be? If I'm so strapped for money, how come we had a new bathroom fitted last year, went to London, went to Eilat last month, and next week we are having more building work done, after which I really do need to buy that new cooker.....???

There's a three-part answer to this valid question.

1. We are not totally without income although it barely covers. Living frugally allows me to put a little away each month so when, for example, I need a new cooker or we want to meet the cousins in Eilat, there is a small emergency fund available. I couldn't do this if I bought clothes, ate out, belonged to a gym, or took taxis everywhere.

2. Some things look extravagant but you may not actually be paying full price for them. You may be invited to that meal in a fancy restaurant and some building costs may be covered by building insurance. Whilst hanging out with family at the posh hotel in Eilat, you might not mention that you were actually staying at a modest hostel down the road. Elderly parents who no longer travel may use their holiday money to bring their grandchildren to them if that's a more convenient arrangement all round. Looks can be deceiving and part of the game is to find ways to enjoy some glamour on a budget.

3. Some purchases are an investment. The new cooker will save money on fuel charges and allow more frugal cooking from scratch than is currently possible. The spare room is getting a dividing wall so that a corridor is made along one side to get to DD's bedroom. We are re-instating the lodger idea but with a few tweaks to make it more suitable for our lifestyle. Both of these purchases will pay for themselves over the next few months.

So that's the answer folks. I'm not doing this frugal business for fun. I don't have money to spare at the moment. However, I do have a plan to see us through the challenging years of being a single mother with a young child. It requires a certain amount of juggling and keeping a couple of months ahead of the bank balance. What it doesn't mean is that we are sitting in the dark, cold and hungry - although it could mean this if  I weren't doing the frugal thing.

I hope that clears things up for those of you who were asking. And please feel free to ask anything, it's good to explain when more clarity is needed.

A Store Cupboard Vegan Dinner Party

I am aware that I may have upped the ante when it comes to store cupboard meals. If my store cupboard guru isn't proud of me for this one I give up.

It all started when an old friend from England, currently living in Tel Aviv, came for Friday Night Dinner. Notice the capital letters there? Friday Night Dinner isn't just food on a Friday evening. It's one of the two main Shabbat (Sabbath) meals. At least three courses are expected and there are often four.

My friend and I have a mutual friend living round the corner so I also invited her and her family of three. We were six at table, four courses, vegan, and almost entirely from the store cupboard.

The Menu

Hors d'ouvres
Wine - My friend from round the corner brought a bottle of wine.
Challa - I bought two loaves of challa. (about 6 shekels each but one is left over for sandwiches during the week)
Humus - Home Made and all from the cupboard.
Coleslaw - I had a cabbage and I made it with red bell peppers instead of carrots as that's what I had.
Salad - Tomato/cucumber/avocado
Pickled cucumbers - A tin from the cupboard.

Soup
Tomato soup - There was an offer of three one litre cartons of assorted soft drinks for 12 shekels. I bought apple and mango for drinking, and one litre of  tomato juice to add to the soup. The other ingredients were sauteed onions, red peppers and garlic, tomato puree and seasonings. I had all of those in stock.
Soup nuts - From the cupboard.

Main Course
Shepherd's pie - In the freezer I had a bag of Tivol 'minced meat' (tvp) which I sauteed up with onion, garlic, tomato puree, soy sauce and some powdered onion soup mix. The topping was made from two other packets found in the freezer which needed to be used up; cauliflower and artichoke hearts. (I'm not even sure why I bought the artichoke hearts, they must have been on offer.) Both boiled and processed into a puree with seasoning and some flour to bind it a bit.

I only remembered to photograph it afterwards. #bloggerfail

Roast potatoes - Yup, we had potatoes and oil in stock.
Mixed vegetables - I used up whatever there was. It was mainly mushrooms, peas, tofu cubes, and onions.

Dessert
Hot vanilla-iced cake - I bought it (14 shekels)
Dates and fresh strawberries - Brought by friend from Tel Aviv.
Tea and coffee

The total cost for dinner for six was 6 shekels for the challa, 12 shekels for the drinks, and 14 shekels for the cake. 32 shekels is about 5.50GBP. And there are leftovers for the week in the fridge.

Obviously you can't do this every week as you have to buy food sometimes but it's great when you can pull it off. If I'd not had so many vegetables in the fridge I could have made the shepherd's pie into a pasta bake and the mixed vegetables could have been tinned mushrooms and a gravy to be served with couscous or rice. I always have tvp and peas in the freezer and a cabbage, tomatoes and cucumbers in the fridge. The soup nuts are also a staple here as DD likes a little bag of them to take to school for a snack.

For more about store cupboard eating look here.

When Everything Breaks At Once

If you were following my STOP-tober and NOT-vember posts about living frugally and saving money, you will know that I got into it in a big way. I didn't do a summing up post (pun intended) at the end of November but I continued into December and even with Hanukkah and DD's birthday I managed to get the total month's spending down to just under 6,000 shekel. That's currently a bit over 1,000GBP.

With this new figure I was confidently anticipating 2014 to be a financially doable year. I added up expected income and even before finding some more work (which I must do and I have the time for) I was comfortably within the spending budget. So positive was I that I even started a savings account with money added automatically every month.

Finding out that 1st Grade will cost much more than Kindergarten (the afternoon programme with lunch and one special interest club, until 4.30pm is extra whereas this year we had an almost free school day until 4pm) and reading that the cost of living is going up (though not salaries of course) did not phase me (much).

Then everything broke.

1. Friends in England sent DD 150 shekels for a birthday present. I added another 150 to get her the cheapest tablet (TEAC) for 299 shekels. (You can get cheaper online but I wanted to buy from a reputable store nearby.) The first one had a dodgy battery so they swapped it for a new one. The new one packed up after two weeks.

ME: Are you having a lot of trouble with these cheap tablets?
SHOP MAN: Some
ME: So why are you selling them?
SHOP MAN: I don't  know.

The next tablet up (Pocketbook) was 499 shekels. I don't know if I would have bought DD a tablet for 500 shekels in the first place. However, having given it to her I couldn't now take it away. So I paid the 200 shekels difference and we have a new new, hopefully better, tablet.

2. DD has a CD player in her room to listen to her music while falling asleep. When we rented out our place 1 1/2 years ago, the renters' 3yo son walked in, picked up the machine and dropped it on the floor. It still worked after a fashion but it was never the same again. The loose button that we had to keep balancing in place finally admitted defeat this week and the whole thing died. 299 shekels for a new one. (Yes I know we could download music onto the tablet but we have CDs and we use them.)

3. A DVD got stuck in the DVD player. No way to get it out. 199 shekels for a new DVD player.

That's 698 Shekels paid out today for electrical items. And we've not finished. The rest, however will have to wait until next month.

4. I need a new oven. When I posted those nice looking cakes I made for DD's birthday I neglected to mention that they were barely cooked in the middle and decidedly crisp at the edges. When I make pizza from scratch I have to put each slice on the toaster/grill to finish cooking the base underneath. I always use the highest setting these days but it's just not getting hot enough. New cooker: from 1,200 to 1,800 shekels (depending on the model) plus delivery charge.

5. As if all of this isn't enough, the microwave door broke. New microwave: about 400 shekels. I may have to do without this for a while.

That's almost 3,000 shekels (about 500GBP). That's the emergency fund that Elaine Colliar (@MFinThree) advised that we save up. It's the amount I smugly reported back that I would have saved up by September. Gone by the first week in January!

Of course the money isn't going to come out of the emergency fund. Don't worry Elaine, I heard you. It will come from another year of living close to the breadline. Ho hum, one day my prince will come...