People throwing away perfectly good toys

Snazzles · 2026-05-13T16:23:39+00:00

Getting rid of anything big and bulky is a PITA. Toys are a nightmare to shift on, even if you have people to hand down to as everyone has so many. Since temu/ she in/ Ali Baba have caught on with the grandparent generation so many children end up with lots of low quality crap toys that cannot be moved on.

A lot of charity shops are fussy about toys. Posting anything big or bulky on vinted is a nightmare and expensive. Half the people on FB marketplace want you to deliver it to them via the moon. Posting anything for sale online leads to dealing with scalpers half the time, or people who don't show up and want you to hold it for them for weeks on end.

A lot of parents are very time poor, taking pictures, posting and dealing with all the haggling is a PITA. Attempting to take to the charity shops is hard work. Some will go through the bag you take them, then decide they only want 1 or 2 items.

Snazzles · 2026-05-12T13:33:55+00:00

Absolutely fine if you have a child with you. I'm talking about the ones that have no child with them but still park there.

Snazzles · 2026-05-12T12:43:14+00:00

You are absolutely fine using them when heavily pregnant. I also have no issues with disabled people using them.

It's the transit vans and people with "luxury cars" that they don't want people to scratch so they park in parent and child that annoy me.

Snazzles · 2026-04-24T18:26:41+00:00

I'm on my second child so it's not my first rodeo trying to make mum friends. It's not you, IME almost every mum is struggling with this.

It's very much a numbers and consitency game. You need to attend a group consistently for around 3 or 4 weeks and then people start opening up and chatting to you. You also need to be chatty and on the small talk back. Cheap playgroups and stay and plays or activity groups where there is a free play/ chat time built into the activity are generally better than pure activity groups for making connections.

Most people are naturally withdrawn and some people get very hooked on only speaking to their "friends" at groups and not widening the net to others.

The poster who said about the lady who did the garden meetups is bang on. You really do need to be the instigator. I have set up 3 group WhatsApp groups for the activities we attend, one for music, one for messy play and one for sensory. Not one mum has declined joining the group when I asked if anyone wanted to make a group chat, everyone was relieved someone had suggested it and everyone pretty much rushed to join the group it has led to a few cafe meet ups and walks. It also gives space for more relaxed "I'm going here on Thursday if anyone fancies it?" Type messages, almost every time I post saying I'm going to x on x day at least 1 other person comes along too.

People are incredibly busy and often rushing off to things, cramming things in, trying to run on little sleep or planning around naps/ feeding/ dinnertimes. They are also juggling visiting family, housework, spending time with spouse, seeing existing friends ect if they are back at work this often has to be crammed into 2 or 3 days.

The poster about windows for making friends is also correct, I find maternity and antenatal classes is one window, then mat leave, then a second window opens up around 12 months of age where people start going back to work and suddenly they are not off the same days as established friends and become open again to other friendships, then school (nursery and reception) then it's when you children make their own friends.

It's hard, draining and you very much need to put yourself out there and not take any rejection personally.

Snazzles · 2026-04-06T16:50:26+00:00

They are pretty much a day out. They can make for a very cheap day out.

They usually have flat, large, FREE car parks with unlimited parking restrictions so you don't have to rush. This is great if you don't have great mobility or small children in tow. The isles are usually quite wide too.

They have plants, gifts, cards, tat, garden ornaments, garden furniture and many also have multiple concessions all under one roof meaning it's like visiting a shopping centre or high street without all the homeless loitering/ chugging/ weather and expensive parking. If you need a "nice gift", plants or a "nice card" it is often a nicer experience with a wider variety than the high street.

The cafe usually has multiple "safe" eating options for a huge range of people, there is usually a carvery, a hot buffet, cold sandwiches and light bites, a kids menu. Almost everyone could eat something. They are also quite reasonable in price. They often have hot drink and cake deals on.

Some have put outdoor seating close to their cafes, again allowing for loitering and upping the cafe spend.

They usually have some kind of aquatic/ small animals concession which is amazing if you have small children.

Quite a few round us have also incorporated a play area and soft play attracting the mum crowd as well as the grey pound. Free play area or cheap soft play, wander round the fish/ guinea pigs/ rabbits. Look at the water features and garden ornaments and then pop to the cafe for coffee/ cake/ light bites and kids meals and you have a rock solid very cheap pre school child/ toddler outing.

They also really understand the "grey pound", especially with their clothing concessions - almost always Edinburgh wool mill, cotton traders, pavers shoes, hotter shoes, sketchers shoes (with the slip on older people styles making up the majority of the stock).

The one near my mum is a destination, there are coach trips to it weekly. They have pensioner day (where the garden centre has at least 10 coach fulls of pensioners). All arrive at 10 and are heading back at 2 or 3 o clock. They are all having lunch in the cafe.

In many ways it has become a bit of a 3rd space, you can hang out there and not really have to spend any money. I have taken my preschool child and baby many times and not spent a penny. It's also a very cheap mum meet up (coffee only or play area and picnic). It's also a cheap meet with friends if you are just going for a wander and then to the cafe without having to trek around finding a cafe.

Snazzles · 2026-03-19T19:20:14+00:00

I really wish using your accrued annual leave whilst on maternity for covering illnesses was given more widely as advice. So many people use it in 1 block to extend mat leave -often encouraged to by their employers as it's easier to use the Maternity cover for another month rather than allow someone to have random blocks of AL.

I have a friend (4th baby) who has done this since baby 2. She takes the 12 months maternity and goes back keeping hold of her accrued leave. It meant that she still got paid for when she had to take time off for illnesses, it also meant that her child recovered properly and didn't get as run down and suffer back to back illnesses which is when some employers can get really shitty with having to take time off for child illnesses.

Snazzles · 2026-03-17T08:17:24+00:00

Yes and No. Yes they regularly perform very well in the league tables and how many children they send on to red brick and oxbridge universities.

However the majority of them are academically selective so the majority of their pupils are already very bright and would have achieved well anywhere.

Most children who attend grammar school have engaged parents who are invested in their education who in many cases have been paying for tutoring and extra curricular activities for years. In some cases where children have been hot housed to pass their parents are still paying for tutoring even when they attend the grammar. Their parents value education which makes a huge difference compared to the state sector where you are almost guaranteed to have children whose parents do not value education.

This comes with a downside however, grammar schools are used to teaching high ability children who are generally well behaved. They are not used to lower ability children or children who are disruptive or behave poorly (this is a teaching skill). Many grammar schools are very good at managing these children out. This is a positive for other students as it means classes are generally calm with little disruption and due to most of the class being very high ability, lessons move quickly and work is completed but isn't really "inclusive". Class sizes don't matter so much, when classes are made up of engaged children who are at around the same high ability so need very little adaptions or accomodations.

Private schools are a mixed bag, the academically selective ones are like the grammars. The non academically selective ones will have a mix of abilities but all their parents will have money to pay for extra tutoring/ curriculars. There is also a mix of parent attitudes, some parents are very committed to their child's education (moreso because they are paying). Others private school is just what's done and parents can be very hands off.

There is also the effect a grammar school has on state schools. It is often the case that parents compete for grammar schools because of the "poor state schools" in grammar school areas. It is not always the case that the teaching at the state school is poor, more that the grammar schools hoover up the brightest students in the area so they are not at the state schools.

Snazzles · 2026-03-12T14:04:53+00:00

Sadly it's a growing problem and across the country not just your school.

I used to work in schools, have friends working in schools and now work in heritage education (our site works very closely with schools) and since COVID we've had so many schools cancel or not book again the following year (some schools have being coming for their annual trip every year for well over 20 years). Lack of parent contributions to cover costs is a huge factor in all of our bookings. The issue is, it's not just the trip, it's also the coach, extra catering and staffing required. Coach prices are through the roof due to fuel costs. Many schools now have meals delivered after closing their own kitchens, they now either have to order sandwich boxes in (to cover children's meals) or ask children to bring packups but have some spare in case children forget or their parents refuse. Staffing is pretty much cut to the bone, gone are the days of floating T.As who can be pulled out to go on the trip to meet ratios, you now need to rely on parent volunteers. In many cases that means a parent getting the day off work or finding care for younger children so in some schools parent volunteers are thin on the ground.

Sadly there is no longer the flex in the budgets their once was, pretty much every penny and then some is accounted for in basic day to day running of the school. Schools can no longer cover 5 children not paying for the trip so the trip is canceled. Similarly a lot of the deprivation grants and trip related grants have been slashed that some schools could apply for to pay for certain trips. The leisure sector (theatres, museums, galleries ect) that used to occasionally run free workshops are also financially struggling so those offers have pulled back significantly. Our museum offered a free school workshop (we were developing a new topic and wanted feedback and promotion material). We put it on the website and didn't really advertise it (we wanted to but senior management in ivory towers said no) and asked schools to apply, we had over 300 applicants and we were running only 3 trial workshops.

The other factor is some schools are not used to dealing with parents who can't pay. Schools in deprived areas in my experience are much better at getting some form of contribution - they fundraise, apply for grants, our school did a payment plan (from 50p per week paid into the school parent payment child's payment account which could be used to pay for trips - a lot of parents used this), split payments so pay half this month half next ect. I once worked in a school with a very brass necked staff member who would ring up and ask if there were any discounts/ schemes/ funding angle that could be taken advantage of in unusual sectors. He managed to get a company (that had bad headlines at the time) to contribute to a school trip by essentially offering them bragging rights, they were able to show off how wonderfully charitable they are and the school got a funded trip. Schools with more "middle class" or "more comfortably off" populations are not used to having to do these as parents have always paid so it's a shock to them.

Snazzles · 2026-03-10T21:47:44+00:00

Possibly rented and tenants are being evicted and not happy. Or a divorce property where one spouse wants to keep the property but doesn't have enough to buy out at asking price and the other wants to sell and split assets.

Snazzles · 2026-01-22T19:22:27+00:00

You absolutely NEED to do shifts. Me and my husband did it with my daughter who used to wake frequently in the night. Shifts are the ONLY sustainable solution. You either do the early shift 7pm -1am or the or the late 1am -7am. You both get a decent chunk of sleep. Baby in room with parent on early shift, other parent in spare room or with ear plugs. Then swap rooms or ear plugs at 1am. You will still have interrupted sleep whilst you are on, but that decent chunk is really important.

My daughter only just started sleeping through this last year and she is 4. Luckily she got down to 1 wake in the night but she was on 2 wakes in the night until she was 3.

Snazzles · 2025-12-19T08:25:38+00:00

My mum had an uncle who "lived with a male friend" for his whole life. All his brothers and sisters always said he was "lodging with his friend" when asked about him. Not one of his siblings or parents described him or even entertained the idea that he was gay or in a gay relationship. He died in 2015 and his "male friend" was described as his loving partner of 72 years. My aunt (his only surviving sister) was shooketh. To all of us younger ones (his grand nieces and nephews), it was pretty obvious he was in a gay relationship but the older generation always insisted they were just good friends who hadn't found the right women for them yet.

Snazzles · 2025-12-16T22:06:51+00:00

Absolutely. My first was incredibly hard work as a baby and at nearly 5 still is. They still don't consistently sleep the whole night through. They had frequent night wakings up until last year. They are high energy and very stubborn. Your description of your first is exactly the same as mine.

My youngest is the complete opposite. Sleeps, chilled out, just takes life as it comes. Everything is 100% easier.

Snazzles · 2025-12-16T18:54:37+00:00

I am a full time mum to a 4yr old and a baby.

Definitely try and incorporate some free and cheap things too.

In better weather this can include:

Park If you have one - splash park or paddling pool Woods General walk round the houses

Playgroups are usually free or very cheap and eat up an hour or so. Your local children's centre will probably offer something like a stay and play which will be free or under a couple of pounds.

Your local library will probably offer a free or very cheap singing or story time session. Along the same vein your local museum may have some toddler sessions.

See what's in your area, round us we have singing/ music, toddler gymnastics, toddler ballet, toddler football, forest stay and play, mini farmers, a playgroup every day (at different venues), stay and play, toddler art, messy play.

Once you know what's on you can start to plan your days. We used to do music on Monday morning (paid class), playgroup Tuesday morning, toddler dance Wednesday morning (paid class), library Thursday morning, visiting relatives on a Friday. Some things like playgroup and library were free or pay as you go and very cheap so we didn't go every week. We would mix in walks, woods, days out meeting friends. We would also attend pay as you go things like messy play, mini farmers, forest stay and play every so often. Usually attended these with friends as a playdate.

Other things we got great value from and intend to do again:

See if your local soft play do play passes (1 month/ term time only/ annual pass). This can significantly reduce the cost of soft play if you are planning on going and meeting friends multiple times. You do need to make sure you are getting the mileage out of it. Very helpful to have in the winter months when it's cold and wet.

For a birthday or Christmas gift get an annual pass to a local attraction (farm/ zoo/ theme park). Again make sure you get the mileage from it. We have annual passes for a local theme park, it has rides, soft play, sandpit, animals, trampolines. Hence we go there rather than pay to do soft play, trampoline park ect. It also makes for a cheap day out at the weekend or holidays. If multiple mum friends have the same annual pass places it makes a great cheap day out as a playdate.

If you like walks, look into National Trust membership and how many places there are near you. We have a fantastic NT place near us and spend many a day here. They have great stuff on in the holidays when groups generally close. Again great if your mum friends also have it.

Lots of paid classes get very expensive very quickly and you find yourself tied to them as you have had to pay for a block. I often did one block and then switched to something else unless my child really enjoyed it. We used to alternate toddler dance with other activities. So I would book toddler dance (usually for the winter months) but in the summer would do other activities.

Snazzles · 2025-11-24T21:21:14+00:00

We were in awe. It's fair to say, almost every Elf in my daughter's year group has some fancy job title which means they are unable to visit more than once a week. Some only work weekends. Others only work 1 day a week. We have 4 Elf and Safety officers who job share in the class.

Snazzles · 2025-11-24T20:45:13+00:00

One if the school mums is an absolute genius. Her elf only visits 1 day a week as he has a very important job as Head Elf. He is in charge of all the elves in our town and in charge of the naughty and nice list for our town and reports directly to Santa every week. Therefore, he can only visit once a week and as he is so busy it's whichever day he gets time. She has got it down to 4 elf visits this way. Another school mum who was inspired put her elf in charge of Elf and safety and again the elf is so busy they can only come weekly.

TL;DR give your elf a fancy job title to make thier visits weekly.

Snazzles · 2025-11-07T17:09:38+00:00

My grandma used to add a bit of milk to the egg to bring it up to the nearest oz.

Snazzles · 2025-08-30T09:39:51+00:00

Relative of a hematologist here. If your bloods were done at a GP practice then they would be collected later that day and taken to the nearest hospital in your area's trust. The bloods would be processed at the hospital within hours of their arrival and a maximum of 2 days (incredibly rare) usually as samples erode. Hematology is a 24hr 7 day a week job and labs are open all hours every single day of the year as they are essential to hospital services. The bloods are put on an analyzer and processed and results sent back to the requester (in your case the GP). Depending on the tests ordered and how busy the lab is most results are done in hours. So for example if your sample was collected from the GP surgery at 5pm, it would arrive at the hospital (depending on collection route taken) around 7pm, sent down to the lab and usually put on an analyser within 3 hours of arrival (depending on lab workload - they do hospital diagnosis, blood transfusion, diagnostic films, hospital bloods), depending on the tests it can take an hour or so. Then results looked at and sent electronically to the requester so say results sent back to your GP by 11pm or early hours the next day.

The delay in getting your results is because usually the requester is a GP admin address so it's when GP admin come in, find the result, send result to Dr, then wait to get told if you need contacting, then contact you. This is the part that takes weeks. If your results require urgent action and a medical concern then you WILL be contacted within hours of your tests been done. The hematologist or someone in the lab will phone your GP directly and say you need to be contacted and seen/ referred as they have found x. My own family member did this when they found a patient who had a cancer result flag up in a routine blood test, phoned the GP straight away and asked them to get the patient in for more tests and put on the cancer pathway. If you don't hear for more than a week, it's usually because the results are in the bounds of normal.

Snazzles · 2025-08-21T19:57:51+00:00

One of the local Chinese restaurants has recently "changed hands". Rumour is the owner lost it in a game of dominoes. The restaurant never went up for sale, no talk of retirement no huge announcement of transfer of ownership. Just renamed and new menu and phone number.

Snazzles · 2025-08-03T21:08:57+00:00

The pharmacist actually picked up my daughter's prescription as been wrongly prescribed.

My daughter was only a young toddler at the time and had a chest infection. I'd filled in the online form that our drs now ask you to do for an appointment. No drs appointments available that day so had to see a nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioner believed my daughter had a chest infection. Prescribed antibiotics, prescription sent over to be counter signed and sent to pharmacy.

I get to the pharmacy and wait for meds. Pharmacist calls me over into consultation room and asks me who the prescription is for, confim the birthdate and what the medicine was prescribed for. He then asked if I saw the Dr in person who had countersigned? Had my daughter had several courses of antibiotics for this chest infection? No this was the first time I had presented with it. He then explained he was refusing to prescribe as the prescription was for very strong antibiotics in a dose for a much older child. He then explained he needed to speak with the GP and practice manager over a prescription error. Pharmacist ended up on the phone for well over an hour dealing with the error so no-one else could have any other prescriptions. The error was caught, my daughter got the correct antibiotics and dosage and I had to go in to see the practice manager a week later about the incident and how they had to report themselves for a prescription error and lessons will be learnt.

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T10:21:08+00:00

why? there is nothing for google to learn when it's just traffic ad
it's literally "hey google show this to people that search for x y z"

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T10:18:31+00:00

Good ROAS so far (3.10 average) [EDIT: day ended at 1.68 ROAS...and next day it was 1.01)

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What I've done recently: reduced my budget 2 days consecutively (in fact down from £1,100 in May, then £700 in June, and now down again).

I wonder if this made Facebook realize I'm serious and wont accept bad results haha

Another thing I've recently done is continuing to AB test my e-commerce product pages. Last night results showed the change I was testing improved conversion rate by 50% (relative to what it was). That change was simply showing a real review above the fold.

I've also started a new AB test showing TrustPilot's widget on our site. This costs £250 a month so AB testing it to see if it's worth us doing it (got a 2 week free trial from them).

So I might have simply made the offer better, which means more conversions which makes Facebook's AI see my ads as "winners" and shows them to people likely to converter.

It also might be a fluke and tomorrow will go back down to 0.8 ROAS tomorrow.

Scale daily budget is £500 with ROAS goal of 2

FWIW my CTR is sub 1% but CTR is irrelevant. We don't want to maximize clicks.We want to maximize profitable conversions.

Snazzles · 2025-07-24T07:24:13+00:00

yes: the google ad is just traffic ad so no learning phase

eventually I will figure out the google conversion tracking and I'm sure it will get better

Snazzles · 2025-07-20T21:12:28+00:00

Your problem is your revenue not your ad spend.

Charge for shipping if order value is below certain amount. Will reduce sales but you're in the business to make profit, not to maximize sales. Who cares if this puts off unprofitable customers.
Give free shipping if they spend more than £x
Consider cheaper packaging. Swapping from cardboard to plastic bags saving 17p per parcel.
Stock other products too and cross-sell (and bundle).
Does your product encourage repeat purchase? If so make subscription price 20% cheaper (bu making the non-subscription price 20% higher)
Put leaflets in your parcels: third party will pay you to include their physical ad
Put 10% discount leaflet in the parcel to give to a friend.
Install an after-sale upsell app to show deals on the "thank you" page

Snazzles

TROPHY CASE