August - we're into August. I'm not very far down that list of jobs that I left for the huge, long summer holidays that are flying past at a rate of knots. I'm done some useful things like sorting possessions. We've got far too many THINGS. Some things I can part with easily but lots of things feel like I am tearing off bits of me that are physically attached. I find it stressful and my husband keeps out of the way... Anyway, there are 4 sacks of things (mainly clothing) in the hall which are sat waiting to go to the charity shop. That takes petrol to get there so will happen when we have another reason to go in that direction. I try to make mostly circular trips which use less petrol than lots of little trips. It probably uses less time overall too.

I thought of selling one or two bits on ebay but I'm not sure whether they would sell or not. If they don't, then I still have to pay the ebay charges. I've not had a huge amount of success on ebay so far although I have a pair of Hotter shoes (that were a mistake) which would probably sell. I'm better at giving things away to people that would use them. I've freecycled some stuff and can cope with that much better. I've also hidden a couple of things that I want for my patchwork stash for "when I get time".

It is far less effort to give things to charity shops than it is to ebay them. The thing is that if I get something back, then that money all goes into the smallholding fund. Every little bit helps. I found a pack of cranberry juice (slurp! : ) ) in the the reduced items section at Sainsburys last week - and I had a money-off coupon for it. I had a coupon for half the price off some deodorant that I found in Boots on BOGOF. All these little bits stretch the budget and at the end of the month, there is more money to sweep into the smallholding/early retirement fund.

Further to this pennypinching theme: I've tried breadmaking again this week with some fresh yeast I got free from Tesco. (The trip to Sainsburys was to pick up something I really needed and that I had forgotten to pick up at Tesco despite it being on my shopping list.) I made the dough with ordinary flour and not bread flour. I knew it would be no good for a loaf which really needs the hard wheat bread flour, but I wanted to see how some small bread rolls would be and also some pizza bases. I had read of somebody else who makes bread dough and freezes it in bags of the right amount for one pizza. The rolls were slightly heavy but really nice toasted. I'd do them again. They would be good fresh with soup. The pizza base worked well too. I've frozen enough dough to make another pizza to see how that turns out and also a couple of the rolls. Plain flour is cheaper than bread flour...