White Rabbits once more! I know February is the shortest month, but it seems to have gone by very quickly despite a cold grey period in the middle, when I just wanted to stay in bed until it was warm again.
Now it is warm again, well, 8 degrees compared to 2, does feel warm, it's surprising how small a rise in temperature is needed to make the change from shivering under the bedclothes to being up and about doing things. Better still, it now gets light at a reasonable time in the mornings and the dawn chorus is singing away before six, encouraging me to get outside as there is stuff going on. This morning they encouraged me to hang my washing out at 6.15 am. It was still dark then, but it is a task out of the way and the washing should dry now, during the day, at no cost to myself or the environment.
February, was all about the February Frugal Challenge, which was very much about battening down the hatches and getting through the dark days of winter, spending as little as possible. On food spending I did pretty well, the total spend for the month was £72.83 nicely under our £80 budget, but overall I am £50 over budget. This is pretty well accounted for by £26 on a new tyre for the car, £12 on buying an extra pack of computer ink to gain a £4 discount and £10 more than budget on new pyjamas for Oliver. None of it is exactly frivolous stuff but I am still annoyed by the day I was late for my business course and was charged £13.50 for 4 1/2 hours parking by parking where I knew. The following week, a bit of time taken to research parking, found me in a nearer car park for £4.50. A total waste of £9.
I am not too concerned about the overspend though, as my overall spending was still pretty low, including mortgage, insurances, energy costs etc, the spend for February was about £800. Adding £200 as a security net for contingencies, I now know, that I need to generate about £1,000 a month to cover costs, which does not seem too unreasonable. My previous salary was £35,000 but I will be much happier on £12,000, having to watch the spending and make all the economies, is more than made up for by the freedom to spend my time as I please.
Looking forward to March, the emphasis will be on how I am going to generate that money, and hopefully will be a whirl of activity on the soapy business, ready to launch ourselves on the unsuspecting world in April.
As cold process soaps take 4 weeks before they are safe to use, (time for the caustic soda to become fully neutralised), this means I have to make all the soap I want for the launch, this week. Yesterday, I made a soap for the gardener. It has ground pumice stone in it to help clean off the engrained dirt after a gardening session and tea tree oil, which is a natural antiseptic for scratches and prickles. I wanted to colour it a subtle green using spirulina, a sort of dried algae, but I don't think I used enough and given the base colour from the beeswax, it is now an odd sort of dirty grey yellow. I'm hoping it will mute nicely over the four weeks as the lavender soap did. Today's Soap of the Day I think, will be lemon and lime, a nice zesty soap for early morning showers.
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