Thrifty Thursday #2– Paper Money

Watching a repeat of Valentine Warner’s “Ration Book Britain” recently, I was reminded how people during wartime were so very careful to re-use paper whenever they could.

These days we are all very good putting paper in the recycling bin, and using loo-rolls made from recycled stuff etc. – but how often do we actually use a piece of paper more than once? Doing that is not only green, it helps with thriftiness.

Cut up the paper you have and make it serve another purpose before it goes into the bin!

But this is one time when you need to spend a little first in order to save a lot. Three things I have found useful – a trimmer, a glue stick, and a pack of blank cards.

OK, you can use scissors – but a trimmer gives a good straight line, and decent right angles – which looks more professional. I find that many of the greetings cards I receive can be easily trimmed – and stuck on the front of a blank, make another card for mere pence [I never pay more than 5p for a card plus envelope- usually much less- by buying them in The Works, the Range or Poundshops] I make all my own Christmas cards this way. You don’t need to be Dawn Bibby or Martha Stewart – yes, fancy punches and embellishments do make things a little more fancy – but an attractive picture simply stuck onto a card is fine. And it is the thought that counts – what you write inside is the special part of receiving a greeting.

This is my Postcard Box – it is years old – I think it originally held washing tablets or something, but I covered it with pretty paper. Inside I put freebie postcards [picked up from racks at the cinema/exhibitions etc] and cards I have trimmed to size from old greetings cards. Postcards are great – you can use them for sending greetings, or random notes, and it is amazing how much excitement they can generate for the recipient! We use PCs a lot in our family. I wrote one [a cinema freebie] to my cousin just before we went in to see the Harry Potter film. If I’d waited till I had time to write a long newsy letter, she’d never have heard from me for ages.

You can use magazines for loads of craft purposes – make beads [here] I have a lovely pair of pink paperbead ear-rings which Steph gave me. Her friend was making them and selling them for charity.

You can make bunting

OK it won’t last in the rain, but it is fun inside. Martha Stewart’s website has lots more ideas. Many are good for keeping children occupied on wet days. Recycle old maps or calendars for wrapping paper. Floss had a lovely post a year or more ago [sorry, can’t find it now] about wrapping her husband’s birthday gifts in a beautiful old calendar. For CK devotees, why not make cards and wrap the gifts and make the birthday bunting from an old Kidston catalogue?

Decoupage a box or chest of drawers and give it a whole new lease of life.

Then there are other more prosaic ways to re-use paper. For as long as I can remember, there has been a box next to the computer printer for ‘used-on-one-side-only’ paper. That gets used for dozens of purposes.

And all those envelopes that come with the credit card bill and the charity appeal and the insurance premium demand – which you are not going to use for their intended purpose – try using them for holding other notes [to the milkman, child’s teacher etc] or paste a blank piece over the front [see above] and use for posting a letter. I have noticed that David, our Church Treasurer, is extremely diligent about re-using such envelopes  [he must save the church £s a year through that habit alone] My friend Paul, on the other hand, makes envelopes out of colourful magazine pages and writes the address on a white rectangle stuck on the front.

If you have a memo cube like this, then use your paper trimmer to cut scrap paper into squares when you need refill sheets.

Tissue paper and wrapping paper can be expensive, so save any you have and then iron it flat.

Do this when the iron is cooling after you have pressed the laundry – do not heat it up specially! No steam, warm setting [one dot] on the wrong side. You will find that this softens any residual sellotape, which can be peeled off. Roll the paper round a cardboard tube for storage.

Paper is wonderful and versatile – but it needs to be used wisely. Before you buy, ask yourself –can I make this item with paper I already have in the home? Some quick frugal ideas

• roll up newspaper to make little pots for bedding plants
• put one plastic bag inside another – fill the cavity with paper put through a shredded, and you have a ‘Jiffy Bag’ for posting valuables.
• greetings cards make –greetings cards, postcards, note cards
• ‘prepaid’ envelopes can be altered for other uses
• wrapping paper, and paper bags can be ironed and reused.
• keep a box of old magazines and ‘one-side-used’ printer paper for children to use for crafts and colouring
• if you like crafting yourself, copy online ideas for origami, scrapbooking, iris cards etc- using magazines rather than expensive ‘craft’ papers
• newspaper can be used for polishing windows
• this one is controversial – but perhaps try and use less paper, by sometimes using cotton hankies, and knitted dishcloths instead of bedroom tissues and kitchen towels.
• get books from the library, or failing that charity shops, Amazon or Abebooks  [this latter site is fabulous for out of print, secondhand stuff that nobody else has] You’ll have to ask Mags or somebody if using a Kindle is proving a frugal way to get a library – I’ve got no experience of that!

I confess to being a ‘news junkie’ – but I gave up my newspaper habit some years ago – the BBC website and the Guardian website have all the news [and ‘weekend’ articles] I could want. My family give me magazine subscriptions as Christmas presents [and many shops have free instore magazines] That saves me lots of money

I promised I’d tell you some ‘false economy stories’ – here’s one that happened many years ago, when we lived somewhere else…

The doorbell rang really early one Monday morning in the school holidays [well before 8am] I opened the front door in my nightdress [if you see what I mean] to find two members of our church OAP group there. The wife explained she’d got these old blue curtains she didn’t want, so she had made cushions for all the chairs at the chapel. She and her husband presented us with about sixty square, flattish cushions, all tied up in bundles of six. Now the colour was a typical sort of Baptist-Blue. So that was fine – but then she said “I ran out of cushion filling, so the last few I had to stuff with newspaper” Friends, can I state now you cannot stuff cushions with balls of scrunched up newspaper! Especially when people are going to be wriggling about on them through the Sunday morning sermon.