The this week I've taken a week off from work. I didn't do a whole lot for the first few days of the week, but for the latter half of the week, I've spent a lot of time cleaning the house.
On Friday, however, I felt like I needed to take a break from the cleaning and with the end of a very tight month in sight, I felt like a bit of a splurge.
It started when I passed a local charity shop on the dog walk. I saw a dress and a bag in the window and popped in to ask how much they were. The dress was way too small for me, which is just as well, as it was £22, but the bag was £7 and I really liked it. I didn't have any money on me, but the lady on the till said she would put it aside until I came back later, which was very nice of her.
I returned to the shop half an hour later and dropped a bag of items that I no longer wanted at the same time. I bought the bag and a couple of other things too, spending £11. Here's a picture of the bag:
I always use a cross body bag and I like the fact that this one has 3 zipped compartments; one for keys, one for money/bus pass and one for PPE/makeup, etc. I love my bags to be compartmentalised, so that I can find what I need easily and quickly. I also like the lovely green colour of the bag, which I thought would be nice for the spring.
The other items I bought included this licky mat for the dog, who tends to wolf her food down. I thought this might entertain her for a little while. It was new and was £3.
The final items were these bamboo beakers with a jungle print, which were also new and 50p each.
I was happy with my purchases, but when I got home, I realised that I needed to go out again, as we were out of salad and a few other items and I needed to do a top up shop for the weekend.
My first stop, was Poundland, which is always a £30 spend, as it was this day. Of this spend, £10 was a new jumper that I saw and liked in the window. I then got waylaid in the gardening aisle, as OH wanted some shallots for the allotment. I bought two bags of 10 at £1 each and I needed some more dahlia tubers, as several of mine rotted off this winter. At £1 for two tubers, I thought they were worth a try and bought these 3 packets:
I also bought a few bits of food and some dog treats, as we were virtually out of them. They had some Christmas ones that had been reduced, so I bought some of these. They'd been a bit pricey at Christmas, when I think they were £2 and £3, so I'd given them a miss, but were now either £1 or £1.50.
Next stop was ASDA for salad, fruit, ketchup, bread products, milk, tinned dog food, cereal, wine for OH and me - I chose a low alcohol Rose version this time for £3. That was another £25 spent.
In all, it was a bit of a spendy day, but because I'd received last month's credit card statement, I could now use my card to pay for these things and I won't need to pay them off until March.
I counted non-food items in next month's spending, as I didn't have any spending capacity left in any category except food this month. This is what happens when I have a very low spend month, I kind of burst out of it at the end of the month, just to cheer myself up. Having said this though, most of the things were necessary or everyday groceries (save for CS purchases and the jumper), so I'm not going to give myself a hard time.
I'm just so glad to get to the end of a difficult month and be able to treat myself just a little. I've decided to keep a tally of every non-consumable item that I buy this year, to monitor how much 'stuff' actually comes into the house. I'm hoping it might make me think a bit more before buying things and help to keep the clutter down.
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