The Cost of Not Freezing
Petrol? How much?
Electricity? You are kidding me?
Food – smaller amounts of everything for higher prices? It’s a joke.
But it’s not exactly funny, is it?
I have been talking to friends about moneysaving tips. Please don’t misunderstand… no one is happy about any of them. I have one storage heater that I put on in the winter in a tiny well insulated house and my electricity company wants £167 a month from April. That’s up from £35, which I admit didn’t always cover it in the winter but which I top up immediately I see the bill… but come on, 167 squids!
How on earth are families going to manage?
One of the tips I came across is to wear more clothing in the house to cut heating bills. Pull on another woolly and a hat and those big thick socks. A friend said: “It’s like going back to the 1960s in our house. We are muffled up to the eyeballs.”
If you are as old as us, you may well remember those days when you heated one room with a gas or coal or electric fire (maybe one with fake flames which your dad could at times try to fool you into thinking was on because of the ambient glow, even when the bars were not alight).
It was before the duvet, which my son still laughs at me for calling a quilt. In those days you piled up the blankets and added a coat or two to the bed to snuggle into on long, cold winter nights. I often remember waking up with ice on the inside of the window.
Another tip is to unplug all appliances when not in use. Yes… I know this one and my dad, a gentle kind man whom I only saw angry if we left the lights on when leaving a room, would probably have had a fit about my extension leads and charger cables. It’s on my list, honestly, but sometimes I just darned well forget.
Apparently only 48% of Brits freeze food on or just after its sell by date. Really… only 48%. Since I stopped actually baking and batch cooking because quite frankly I haven’t got the energy or the will, that is largely what my freezer has been for.
Showering at the gym is another tip. Well, ok… if you can afford gym membership then of course get your money’s worth but for the rest of us… should we embrace the pong. Apparently we all spend way too much on keeping our natural odour at bay. Are we going to have to go back to the Elizabethan habit of carrying a nosegay to form a miasm between oneself and any offending pongy people.
I read that reusing washing-up water for the garden was becoming popular again and why not? It’s supposed to keep the aphids away… though through the many hosepipe bans I have weathered in my life when I had gardens, I cant say I noticed.
Any thoughts, dear reader? Perhaps some tips that will really help us through what looks like a difficult time ahead.
