USE YOUR PIGGY BANK
I pop all my small change into my cute little piggy. He then looks after it for me until he's so heavy I can hardly lift him. My bank has a paying in machine which accepts coins, so I use this. I like that this is free and the money goes straight into my account. There are similar machines in most supermarkets however these charge a small percentage for using them.
CASHBACK SITES
After hearing about how much a friend had saved in a year using
TopCashback, I was signing up straight away. By following the links via the site and shopping online as normal you can collect cashback from most well-known retailers such as ASOS, Next and Space NK. It's completely free to join and I see it as earning money for something you already do.
LOYALTY CARDS
My purse is overwhelmed with loyalty cards. The high street ones I use the most are for Boots, The Works and Holland and Barrett. I also use my Tesco Clubcard and Nectar card a lot. I tend to save my reward vouchers and points for Christmas shopping. I also save up my Costa reward points for this time of year when hot chocolate breaks are a must! It's nice to essentially have free cash to spend during the festive period and my bank account likes it too!
DECLUTTER
Clear out your make-up stash and your wardrobe and sell the items you no longer get any use from to a new home. Car boots are a fantastic way to sell your unwanted clutter although they do take a lot of effort. Not everyone is a fan of a 5am alarm! If car boots aren't your thing then head online. Clothes and makeup sell well on Ebay and Depop. I've had success selling furniture on Gumtree and local Facebook selling sites.
MEAL PLANNING
By being sensible with my food shop I find that I can save quite a bit. I like to write down the meals that I'll be cooking over the next few days and make a shopping list of the ingredients. I find that with a list in my hand I'm a lot more focused in the supermarket and less prone to picking up a bag of cookies
or two. I definitely see an improvement in how much food is wasted when I plan my meals and I've been using the freezer a lot more too. From par-boiling broccoli that won't get used in time before freezing or slicing up brown skinned bananas for
delicious milkshakes, I'm more conscious of what gets thrown away.
H IS FOR HAWK by Helen Macdonald ****
I started off the month with Helen Macdonald's much hyped autobiography. The book tells of how she deals with the loss of her father by training a goshawk. This is written so beautifully and I found myself getting lost in Macdonald's prose. There is an other-worldliness surrounding Mabel the goshawk that is truly enchanting. The structure is somewhat unconventional and is a mix of biography, autobiography and academic writing. There are a lot of references to various falconry books and in particular to The Once and Future King by T H White. I found the links between Macdonald herself and T H White extremely interesting. However, I can imagine that this book isn't for everyone. It's almost as if the only way Macdonald can try and understand her grief is to write this book.
ELEANOR AND PARK by Rainbow Rowell **
I've not read much YA fiction before and my teenage years are filled with LOTS of cringe worthy memories. I kind of had an inkling that I wouldn't like Eleanor and Park, but I really wanted to. I did like the first half of the novel and really enjoyed the scenes where the couple get to know each other. The second half seemed to completely spiral out of control. I found the ending was rushed and utterly unbelievable. Another thing that stood out was the constant references to Eleanor's weight. I hate that the negative remarks reinforced the idea that teenage girls are supposed to despise their own bodies. I felt this was unnecessary and it just added to my negative feeling towards the book.
TELL IT TO A STRANGER by Elizabeth Berridge ****
This was my first charity shop find of the month. To be quite honest, I only picked this up because it was the first book published by Persephone that I had the chance to own. The end papers have a really lovely geometric pattern and I knew it had to come home with me. The book itself is a collection of short stories. They are all set during the Second World War and focus on people's experience of the war at home. Berridge focuses on class and gender and the shift in roles that occurred during this time. Each story is beautifully written and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.
THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS by John Wyndham ***
I decided to read this after hearing how much Jean from Jean's Bookish Thoughts liked this. I do really like early 20th century dystopian and apocalyptic literature and I had high hopes for this short novel. However, after every page I found myself hoping for something gripping or disastrous to happen. There's an element of sexism that I really didn't like and overall I just felt disappointed.
MISS BRILL by Katherine Mansfield****
I've wanted to read some of Katherine Mansfield's work for a while now. I thought this Penguin Little Black Classic would be the perfect introduction and it really was. Miss Brill includes three short stories that are impeccably written. As a reader you get to know the characters so well in such a short space of time. This was such a delight to read and I'll definitely be reading more Mansfield in the future.
THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH by Richard Flanagan****
This novel follows Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans from childhood, to the building of the Burma death railway and into old age. The treatment of the POWs building the railway by the Japanese officials is not a nice thing to read about. However, I found these sections the most interesting to the point where I resented having to read the other sections of the novel. I thought the chapters were fragmented and jumped around a lot, making my overall reading experience not an enjoyable one. Despite this, I've given it four stars. It's a book that will stay in my memory for a while and the story of the POW camps is one that needs telling.
