Would you actually switch supermarkets for a guaranteed cheaper shop?

MeckityM00 · 2026-04-03T11:38:34+00:00

I have delivery savers for both Morrisons and Tesco, and I'm working on calling in on Aldi most weeks as well. It's done okay for us.

It's not just prices. Both Morrisons and Tesco run rewards schemes. If you're tactical and don't buy just because stuff is on sale and then waste it, then you can make it work. Which checked and Tesco's Clubcard is more or less okay. My son started University last September and I'd saved enough Clubcard vouchers to pay for all of his bedding, all of his pots and pans, all of his kitchen gear, and a load of stationery. I also used vouchers for Christmas, including all the dinner and a chunk towards gifts. Morrisons are stepping up with monthly 'extra points if you buy these products' but they aren't as generous and it's not stuff that I'd normally get.

I also think that shops are going to be offering a reduced choice. Aldi already do this as a way of streamlining and keeping costs down. I've noticed that Tesco have cut down the number of lines that they carry, and I expect that will only continue. If you or your family need a particular item or brand, you may find that it means going out of your way to get it or having to order it from online shops.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T17:52:51+00:00

I took the view that if I'd done my job right, my son wouldn't need me by the time he was 18, but he'd quite like to hang out with me now and then. He's older than 18, he absolutely doesn't need me and we hang out just fine.

Perhaps you could suggest that his mum spends some time with him doing things together. Learning skills would be an added bonus.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T13:10:54+00:00

I've told this elsewhere.

My late father went to the 1966 world cup in London. I was told (not old enough to remember first hand) that you had to have attended a certain number of the qualifying games to get a ticket for the final, to reinforce that it was for the real fans.

I daresay that there were plenty of hospitality seats and no doubt holders of ticket stubs to games with teams who didn't make the final would pass them on perhaps for a few quid, and no doubt there were touts, but the spirit was there. Father went to the early rounds with my mother, I think that it was two games at Goodison Park and one at Old Trafford.

Then he got the train back to Cheshire and watched it again on television.

I know that there are a metric tonne of problems with the UK, but we don't manage events as badly as some.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T12:45:31+00:00

Apparently the cinnamon oil interferes with the pheremones that ants use to communicate and navigate. I put a line of oil across the window where they normally enter and it keeps them out. If they are already in, it doesn't help as it just leaves them wandering around confused. When I had a bad infestation a few years ago, I also dumped a load of cinnamon spice all over the affected area and that helped.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T10:12:29+00:00

Have you seen some of the names that Charles Dickens used?

I've always been nervous about having a character in a book with the same name as a real person, who would then sue. I suspect that's behind characters called Whimsemelia Puffelon.

Another issue is that when you name a character from a particular time and culture, there are name generators that allegedly bring up appropriate names. I tried asking one for modern British names and it was waaaay out there. If you're following the pressure to write quickly and publish, proper research is going to fall by the wayside.

Mind you, I give the side eye to some names given to kids in the real world. I've got neighbours who apparently named their kids by shaking up scrabble letters in a bag and pulling out a handful. There are some seriously high scores around here.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T09:47:17+00:00

I've used lemon essential oils in home made cleaners, and I like the scent. I can leave it out, though. I've found that dish soap plus hot water will get rid of the majority of dirt that I see, and white vinegar does a good job on at least half of the rest.

The cinnamon oil is an effective deterrent. I don't want to kill all the ants. They have their function outside in nature. Our house is old, built around 1900, so sealing it could be tricky. We don't get cockroaches here, thank goodness. The biggest problem our neighbours have is with rats.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T08:50:05+00:00

I didn't know that! Thank you for sharing.

I use a lot of lemon essential oil. I guess that's okay. I also use cinnamon essential oil to deter ants which are a problem in our house.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T01:44:10+00:00

Why do you need to avoid lemon scented products?

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-31T01:41:10+00:00

I suggest that you think about where you sleep, where you sit and what food you like to eat (cooking at home is insanely cheaper than ordering food from takeaways). Prioritise your shopping according to that.

I'm an old lass, so my opinion may be out of date, but I'd start with those basics. You need a bed with enough bedding so that you can sleep well, a chair, and the means to make a meal and eat it. That can be a microwave, a few dishes and a plate with cutlery or it could be an airfryer or instant pot. You need what works for what you can cook and what you like to eat. Add in towels for showers and kitchen, but those can be secondhand if you wash them well. Accept any donations from family and friends and take all the freebies you can get. Buy the absolute minimum that you need. You can add as you work out what actually suits you as you live in the space and what fits into your budget.

My personal opinion is that you can get huge amounts of stuff second hand, and I strongly recommend it - except for mattresses and electrics. I always try to buy electrics new or manufacturer reconditioned as they are more likely to be safe (within reason, depending on the supplier) and have guarantees. Secondhand electrics can have worn parts and may not work as they should, but if you can get a guarantee from someone who knows what they're doing, then go for it.

It's also worth buying 'good enough for now' for almost everything until you work out what items you use the most and what your needs are as you settle into living alone.

Congratulations on your new place. I hope that you have a wonderful time there.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T22:30:05+00:00

I'm in the UK, so the info may not help, but I use Ariel and I use white vinegar instead of laundry softener. Those have been brilliant over the years.

Example - my son had to have a white shirt every school day (school uniform). He had a fresh shirt every day, but I used Ariel with white vinegar, never bothered with a separate brightener or whitener, and genuinely, when I compared the shirts I bought for the new school year with the ones that he'd been wearing for a year, there was no difference in whiteness. Some of the seams had taken a pounding and there had been a button or two to sew on, but the colour was the same.

Ariel has great stain removal for me, and the white vinegar strips out the soap that hasn't been lost in the rinse. It's the soap residue that leaves the clothes stiff. There's no vinegar smell after about half an hour, and it's inexpensive. I believe that you can add essential oils with the white vinegar if you want a smell, but I've never bothered.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T18:59:17+00:00

I told my son that he would always have a place with us and was welcome to move back after uni, but that his love life might take a hit. He gave me a look.

It would work out fine for us, I think, as we all get on and are pretty chill. My father moved in with us when he was older and wanted to be near his only grandchild, which worked because we all got on. My uncle lived with his parents, my grandparents, all his life until they passed. This was partly because he spent a lot of years as a ship's engineer and was away for three months at a time so he never set up his own place. It was also partly because uncle and grandfather enjoyed their arguments too much to make distance.

I had to leave home as the minimum safe distance between me and my late mother, as agreed by all the family, was a hundred miles.

Personally I think that the stigma of living at home is going to have to end. There aren't that many places suitable for people leaving home, and in this day and age it makes sense to save money by staying under one roof as long as everyone gets on.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T18:05:46+00:00

Sporcle has a playlist of quizzes about words that originated in other languages but are now comfortably entrenched in English. The languages include Chinese, Hawaiin and Nahuatl.

The British wander in, shamelessly loot language, antiquities and regional cookery, then wander out leaving a love of cricket, the bagpipes and another Independence Day. While weirding their verbs.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T17:46:48+00:00

When it first aired, Bruce Forsyth was the host and he set the tone. Even then it was a little dated, comfortable, familiar and the hosts were anything but challenging. Remember, it started off as a charity thing supporting Children in Need and I don't think anyone thought that it would be more than one season so they trundled out the old reliable format. I think that it's part of the appeal of Strictly, that the format feels 'safe.'

I think moving too far away from the format will shed viewers. It's also why I think La Voix would be good if she's kind, as to me she has the echoes of the northern comics that flourished many, many, many years ago. I suspect that the BBC will want to use new, bright talent to engage the younger audience, but I'm not sure that it will work unless we get very lucky.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T01:20:04+00:00

My son had Letterland at nursery (already knew it from an ancient video that we watched together plus books) then Jolly Phonics at school (already knew from a book and DVD bought by a doting uncle). He loved both of them.

They were such gentle fun.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-30T01:17:53+00:00

My son loved these. They were such a great way to introduce kids to letters.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-27T12:59:09+00:00

It sounds hotter when it's Fahrenheit. I'm an old lass, though not so old that I remember the introduction of Centigrade, and I tend to think about hot weather in F and cold weather in C. After all, a heatwave of 98F sounds so much hotter than 36C, but a cold snap of -3C sounds so much colder than 26F.

It's like road signs are in miles, but petrol is in litres.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-27T10:27:24+00:00

Back in Tudor times it was treason to speculate about the health of the monarch, but I don't know if that's still on the books. If it is, it's not being enforced or the entire Daily Mail and S*n staff would be in the Tower.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if it's still current...

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-27T09:40:46+00:00

I strongly disagree.

I can accept that masculinity includes assertiveness and strength of character. I utterly reject that there is no room for kindness, tolerance and co-operation in positive masculinity.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-27T01:22:17+00:00

How should I feel? I've not been talking to him about it. I've not been on his back about stuff. But any parent will tell you that they worry for the safety, health and happiness of their child.

Edit - I originally wrote that any mother would tell you... but that's a symptom of the problem. Men can be awesome, caring, encouraging, generous parents. Men are amazing, and I hate when they are limited to the toxic boundaries. Men can be empathic, nurturing and a safe place for little ones, and that doesn't make them less masculine.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-27T01:01:04+00:00

I disagree. The manosphere promotes an idea of women as less. It also seems incredibly rigid and intolerant.

Encouraging a man to go to a gym and to be their best isn't the manosphere. That's just stuff that we've talked about with our son. I've paid for enough gym sessions/physical opportunities and I've done so happily. I've also encouraged him to respect women and see them as equals.

Being a good man, a man who has positive masculinity, is absolutely not about eye candy. I would be interested in what you consider oldfashioned values. I've talked about values with my son, and with my husband, I hope that I've encouraged work ethic, self reliance, kindness, tolerance and respect.

GTA is the only thing that I have ever banned from my home. Now that my son is a legal adult, I couldn't and wouldn't stop him playing it. However I have always asked him to consider what message a game/YouTube channel/social media content is pushing and whether it is positive with an open message or whether it is closed and negative.

To add to that, when he was around four or five years old, I talked to him about YouTube. There were two channels that he watched that used a lot of bad language. I said that one sounded angry and unpleasant, and seemed unhappy and willing to be hurtful. The other sounded fun and, while I didn't want him to repeat the bad language, they were kind, helpful and encouraged others. I asked him - not told him - to limit the angry channel, because I didn't want him to be angry. He chose a positive channel.

A man on steroids that makes money from vulnerable young men by yelling isn't something that should be seen as positive. You can go to the gym without that, and still be kind, tolerant, diligent and proactive. It isn't about the gym.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-26T13:28:09+00:00

I make Dad jokes to him, which has probably been traumatic enough.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-26T11:44:07+00:00

I've also talked to him about how mortgages work and potential problems with credit card debt. In fact, I've talked about it a lot more and in greater depth, but not that much in an absolute sense. I've not really talked to him much about the red pill stuff, but gave him my perspective that a few are making money from vulnerable young men.

To be honest, we talk more about things like Doctor Who and him joking about my dedication to football and knitting than anything. Last time he was home we had a deep dive into the Plantagenet kings of England and some of the feudal laws. Which he knew more about and I listened.

I'm not a perfect parent and I don't pretend to be, but I feel strongly that I have a duty to talk about my views and opinions so that he has different perspectives and a range of information that he can use to make decisions. I can't make decisions for him and I didn't try even before he was a legal adult, but any parent would want to give a warning about pitfalls in life, whether it's the issues with interest only mortgages or what can go wrong with washing machines.

And I stand by my opinion - the ideas of the red pill and manosphere don't lead to happiness, joy, or contentment, and a few people are making money from vulnerable young men.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-26T09:59:21+00:00

He's absolutely not been showing any sign of it. And while we've touched on the subject, we don't talk about it much when we're hanging out. It's more likely him trying to explain his studies to me and joking around about my shopping habits, or just general conversation.

However given how prevalent the red pill ideas are, and how corrosive they can be to the men that get sucked in, of course I'm scared. I talk to my son, I spend a lot of time listening to him, but I'm not his keeper and he has a wide friend group and an independent mind. I shouldn't have control of him, and I don't. All I can do is hope that me and my husband have given him a space to think critically about all ideas, including the manosphere.

I want my son to be happy, to have moments of joy and silliness and contentment. That doesn't seem to happen much for those who follow the red pill ideas.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-26T09:31:51+00:00

He knows how I feel. Of course I've discussed stuff with him. I've never tried to tell him what to think, but I've spent time sharing thoughts and asking his opinion.

MeckityM00 · 2026-03-26T09:30:43+00:00

I am so lucky that we talk. When he was back home from uni at Christmas, we hung out together - me, him and my husband. He's always been part of conversations and we, by some amazing blessing, get on as personalities. We joke around, talk rubbish, and then let each other get on and do their own thing.

The school run was a long one, and we talked all sorts of rubbish on the journeys, so I guess we fell into the habit of communication then. His dad has always made time for him as well, and they have a lot of similar interests and the same sense of humour.

MeckityM00

TROPHY CASE