A whole week in.

January 8, 2024

A whole week in.

After the drama that was NYEve, I really needed January to be smooth and gentle with me. I forgot though that January has eleventy billion days in it.

I have survived one week of 2024 without any personal shopping. Yey me. I did have to buy batteries for the office though and that was tough because the website had so many lovely things to look at and it <winge> wasn’t fair and ebay keep sending me offers of 15% off and Emma Bridgewater have a 70% off selected items and I absolutely NEED to buy things I didn’t get for Yule.

However. I have resisted. 

I don’t feel happy or smug though. I’m just miserable that the reason I’m having to do this is not for personal challenge or a big fat reward but for the scary car fixing issue. Hey ho. Maybe I’ll find a biscuit tin in a cupboard stuffed full of notes that I’ve forgotten about – even though I would absolutely not be rummaging cupboards looking for biscuits. No. 

There was a question from my previous post about burning stuff, so I need to elaborate on that and just clarify that I am not a dodgy pyromaniac. We have three open fireplaces in the house, one is used almost every day, one used occasionally and the third is just used by stupid pigeons when they fall down.

Every bin point in the house has two bags one brown paper and one bread bag usually b’cs why pay for bin bags?! Everything that cannot be eaten, reheated as left overs, composted, fed to the chickens, recycled via the council or reused as quiz night scrap paper somehow will fall into those two categories – burnable or not. Not burnable is usually food packaging or vomit filled tissues b’cs we have learnt that cat vomit stinks when burnt. Everything else – thin cardboard, tissues, wipes, ice cream sticks, receipts, old shopping lists, post appointment wax strips, quiz night notes etc etc goes into the brown bag and is forming what we call ‘burnable bags’ and these are laid in the bottom of the open fire grate as starters. Through the summer we build up a stash alongside the wood and in the winter we get through them. Simples. It means we put out very little in terms of black rubbish to landfill. On bin night we would put out maybe half a bag and this is usually 3/4 cat litter and 1/4 plastic food wrapping.

The food wrapping comes from Olio, we have no control over that unfortunately. But avoiding food waste is a huge positive in our eyes. Last week we scored an absolute major Olio haul – a WHOLE DUCK from Tesco, formerly £37 and not purchased even when reduced to £16. It lasted us three nights combined with Olio egg noodles and veggies. Three nights of free food and blinking delicious it was too. Oh my days, it’s a high bar to ever match in the future.

Last night we had out of date Angel Delight made with Olio unclaimed milk. Not quite as amazing as a whole duck but pretty good in the grand scheme of food satisfaction. And so far this year, the pantry challenge has required us to only buy milk and cat food – the authorised things.

How is your experience with Olio going? Have you signed up yet? Found you need to never buy bread again but do need a second freezer for all this veg and fruit that pops up? Do share peeps.

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