Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Thrifty tips, ideas, news & experiences on anything around the home to shopping to re-cycling etc.
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

I've just returned from Bulgaria or Frugal Central, firstly my grown up men and one girlfriend loved their first visit to Bulgaria, they approved of the house, the garden ,its proximity to beaches, the weather, the village and the shops. TB and I had a very different stay it being the first time we've ever entertained visitors and by the end of the first week when they'd departed and left me alone I'd only read seven pages of a book! Spending the second week in the house alone was relaxing although it got cold at night and I had to put the duvet on the bed the days were warm enough for me to strip the other beds and hand wash the bedding. Followed by more hand washing of clothing as we won't return for about six months and I didn't intend to return to a full washing basket.
I had one of next doors hens spending the day in our garden so it was a case of two old birds together, with me weeding and her following to eat any exposed bugs.
On my last day there I went into the garden to pick some grapes to have with my breakfast yogurt and for a mid-morning snack I went to the hazel nut tree to gather and crack the windfalls. I did find a pomegranate tree with fruit in the garden but the one I tried was a bit bitter and although there are tons of pears they had yet to ripen. So I put all the food stuffs that wouldn't last for six months into a bag, took them to our neighbour, turned off and drained the water, turned off the electric and locked the gate until our next visit.
User avatar
albertajune
Legendary Laner
Posts: 5073
Joined: 02 Oct 2010, 15:39
Gender: Female
Location: Aldermaston, Berks.

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by albertajune »

What a lovely break. Sounds idyll and somewhere to absolutely relax. Lucky you
I am now a widow and live with my memories.
User avatar
Mo
Legendary Laner
Posts: 15359
Joined: 30 Apr 2007, 09:39
Location: Cheshire (nr Chester)

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Mo »

Is your neighbour also English or do you speak Bulgarian? It would terrify me.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

My neighbour has as much English as I have Bulgarian which is very little but we get by.
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

TB and I have decided to press ahead with getting our village house up to Bulgarian winter standard which means getting the basement "habitable" as many locals move down stairs and into a couple of rooms to keep warm. This will mean getting more electric sockets put in, plastering the walls, getting a new wood burning stove and heaters and getting double glazing. Like many village homes our house has no internal staircase and we will have to think long and hard about installing one because if we did the heat would just escape upstairs which would defeat the object. We are also well aware that our little house is divided in to small rooms for the same reason and will resist the temptation (that seems to be fashionable over here) that other Brits have done to knock down walls to create huge open plan living (very chilly or expensive to heat) spaces. Bulgarian village houses are in the main detached, south facing with no windows in the north wall for obvious reasons and who are we to argue. The one "fly" in the ointment is that we would have to use the old outside bathroom, which will bring back memories of my younger life, however this outside bathroom has a wood burning shower!
Freeranger
Legendary Laner
Posts: 3171
Joined: 17 Apr 2012, 10:13

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Freeranger »

Minus the w-b-shower, that sounds a lot like our house here in Scotland. They knew what they were doing back then. When we have it draught proof and insulated, the theory is it should take very little heating. We look forward to finding out! Oh - another difference is people think we've fallen off the globe here.
User avatar
Spreckly
Legendary Laner
Posts: 5822
Joined: 26 Mar 2011, 14:21

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Spreckly »

What an interesting post.
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

Yes freeranger, having moved into a "two up two down" terraced house with my Mum and siblings on her divorce we went from "middle class semi" to a house with an outside loo and no hot water, but I at least was a lot happier because there were no more daily arguments and tensions. So no bathroom and an outside loo where to me a price worth paying for peace and quiet.
Now our little village house in Bulgaria has an upstairs "wet room" but also downstairs, outside just past the basement steps it has an external "wet room" complete with a cement wash basin large enough to bathe a largish child in, wash both body and clothing in, a toilet and the wood burning shower which also provides hot water to the sink and runs off twigs and small kindling (with any luck I'll be able to post pictures of this facility soon) there's a plug/drainage hole in the floor which I assume goes into the cess pit (which we've not located yet) the upstairs facility is on mains drainage which is nothing like what we are used to here in the UK.
However I just cannot help thinking how much easier our little post divorce lives back in the sixties would have been if these sort of cleaning/cleansing facilitates had been installed into the backyards of terraced streets in the 40s,50s,60s and so on.
User avatar
Mo
Legendary Laner
Posts: 15359
Joined: 30 Apr 2007, 09:39
Location: Cheshire (nr Chester)

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Mo »

Reminds me of the terrace house I shared in the 60s. My first job, we rented it in Stockton on Tees. 2 bedrooms upstairs, Living room leading to the kitchen leading to back door to yard & loo.
Sink with cold tap in the kitchen, + Baby Burco + spin dryer. At the other side of the kitchen was bath which you filled by wheeling the spin dryer across with the Burco full of hot water on top. If anyone was in the bath you couldn't use the kitchen or the loo. We discovered when the kitchen flooded that there was no pipe connecting the bath to the hole in the floor. Water was piped out of the kitchen, under the ramshackle lean to, then swished across the yard to a drain the other side.
Boil or handwash clothes then hang them over the bath because they wouldn't stay clean outside. If it rained the raindrops left marks on your raincoat.
And in winter you needed a nightlight to stop the loo freezing.
Interesting times.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

And yet we managed Mo, I don't mean to be nostalgic for the "good old days" or "young people today don't know they've been born" or so on. What I do mean and incidentally what attracted me to life in a Bulgarian village is the waste not want not /can do / get on with things lifestyle. No doubt there will be/ could be people who cannot live without the latest must have whatever in any village but our house is big enough for two but could stretch to six, the garden is big enough (but not too big) to provide for two or more with enough left over to preserve for the lean months and everyone is in the same boat, as far as I can see. So lets raise a glass of home made whatever (in my case plum wine) to a simple life. )w(
User avatar
Mo
Legendary Laner
Posts: 15359
Joined: 30 Apr 2007, 09:39
Location: Cheshire (nr Chester)

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Mo »

Yes, it was more amusing than hardship to manage as an almost student. Wouldn't have wanted to start a family there.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
Dorrens daughter
Lively Laner
Posts: 105
Joined: 30 Aug 2018, 16:29

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Dorrens daughter »

Yes I know what you mean Mo, but I'm sure many people did start family life in such a place. Now that I'm older I think that for me the secret to a reasonably content life is to know "how much is enough" and not to want for more than that. So I can go though life without wanting the latest this or that thinking that "things" could make me happier, it dismays me when I read about so and so having a fleet of cars or whatever, how many cars can you drive at one time? I read yesterday that Harry and Meghan's new royal apartment is some castle or other has 21 rooms! What on earth do they need all that space for?
No for me I have more than enough "stuff" and I know that acquiring more is not the answer to a content life.
User avatar
Mo
Legendary Laner
Posts: 15359
Joined: 30 Apr 2007, 09:39
Location: Cheshire (nr Chester)

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Mo »

Very true
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
Freeranger
Legendary Laner
Posts: 3171
Joined: 17 Apr 2012, 10:13

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Freeranger »

I was struck, reading this thread, by similarities with my nanna's & grandad's house. They got bombed out during the war and so were given a council house. It had a front and back garden - front for flowers and back was big enough to grow everything they needed and the greenhouse to start it out from. The back passage (ooooo matron!) from garden to kitchen lead past the coal house, lav and scullery. The lav was just a second one as it did have a bathroom indoors. The scullery had a huge sink and a drain in one corner, and had held a water heater when it was built. i remember it in late 60s/70s.
Council houses assumed a very similar lifestyle to the one you are looking for. I wonder when we changed.
User avatar
Mo
Legendary Laner
Posts: 15359
Joined: 30 Apr 2007, 09:39
Location: Cheshire (nr Chester)

Re: Just returned from "Frugal Central"

Post by Mo »

Freeranger wrote:I wonder when we changed.
During the 'you've never had it so good' years of the 60s I guess. And factory farming / cheap food.
Certainly when I was growing up home produced food was a necessary money-saver.
When I moved here a couple of years after marriage, the children (age 10 & 6) who had lived next door to our house came to visit (and must have been left for the afternoon). I let them explore the garden and pick raspberries from the very overgrown thicket of canes, then we pushed my pram to the greengrocer / grower. They said 'oh we could have bought them'. Hmmm. But then when I grew peas in the first house they were surprised that they came in pods not in frozen packets.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
Post Reply