About

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Brush to Basics.

This blog details mine and my partner's journey to reduce our household spending whilst also trying to be more eco-friendly too.

The name is based on my surname (which happens to be Brush)

January 2016

On paper we should earn enough to pay for all of our monthly bills with a bit spare however each month we seem to be short so I felt it was time we reign things in a bit and looked at ways we could reduce our spending whilst not completely changing our current lifestyle.

Without boring you with the details moving in to our own place for the first time followed by a bout of unemployment has left us with a bit of debt to our names. This is now in a place where it is manageable, it does however mean that a large chunk (about 1/4 of our earnings) goes into paying things off each month before we even see it for household bills. I would not say our debt is massive but you could certainly buy a brand new family car with the amount we currently have outstanding.

The other 1/4 is our rent and then the rest is for everything else.

We spend way too much each month on takeaways, if we cannot be bothered to cook we just tend to order something in and this is where the biggest portion of our earnings is "wasted" so the first thing I am planning on tacking is our weekly shopping.

Now as an animal loving meat eater I try to buy free range or organic meat where possible - it is however difficult to pass on by a reduced packet of something else in the supermarket so please forgive me if I sway from this sometimes!

I also insist on British honey as well as freedom food/organic eggs (as there are different grades of free range which I will go into at some point!)

I am also not a fan of consumable plastics (plastics with a single use) however I may buy some plastic items which I can get years of use out of. This is normally quite difficult to get past in the supermarket however I will always recycle plastic and our council will also sort and recycle general waste too which is pretty good.

I also don't use chemical cleaners in the household, they are not good for you, animals or the environment so I may go into those too at some point.

I hope you will enjoy reading this blog and feel free to comment where you see fit :)

Emily