Shiply can help with a range of challenges you might face over the Christmas period, from the all-important build up, right through to the new year. With savings of up to 75%, Shiply can help save you money during what is typically an expensive time of year, for a range of different services like moving home, helping with those bulky furniture arrangements and getting those all-important presents to your loved ones.

Image source aaees.net

Coming home from uni?

If you have to leave your halls of residence at the end of every term, you might need some help getting everything home. It’s easy to find a removal service on Shiply, and if you need help packing and unpacking, our transport providers can quote for these services, too. Perfect for if you’ve asked enough favours this year from your parents or friends or if your uni is particularly far from home.

Christmas presents

You’ve found the perfect gift for Mr or Ms Impossible-to-buy-for, BUT you’ve discovered that the item is collection only and is to be collected from the other side of the country…or somewhere just too difficult to get to. Many of Shiply’s customers find it super-easy to find a courier to get you that perfect gift, whether it’s coming from the next village or the next country. Shiply is also an eBay-compatible application so you don’t need to put in ebay item details manually – just put the eBay URL into our form and the fields will populate automatically with item information and photos to save you time.

Image source – therugseller.co.uk

Moving home?

Have you recently bought a new home that you’re going to be moving into in time for the arrival of Father Christmas? The combination of the pressure of Christmas festivities alongside what is notoriously one of the most stressful things you can do could easily be calmed by hiring a helping hand, be it just a man with a van to get your things from A to B with a bit of heavy lifting or whether you’d like someone to take care of the whole process while you’re at work, including packing, unpacking, assembling and disassembling furniture and appliances. We can even help with pets!

Preparing your home for Christmas

Preparing your home for Christmas day can involve a lot of organisation and hard work. Maybe your Christmas tree is too heavy to carry yourself or you could do with some help having your decorations delivered as well as installing them at home. Just list your requirements on Shiply if you think it’ll be difficult to do alone this year.
Not enough chairs for everyone to sit round the table? A man and van service can help you gather up those spare chairs from loved ones’ homes so you can all be comfortable on Christmas day.

This Friday (22 September) is World Car Free Day, a day where many cities across the world encourage people to not use the cars for a full day, swapping them for greener alternatives like walking or cycling.

World Car Free Day in Kuala Lumpar. Image Source: thesundaily.my

Last year (September 2016) Paris joined the list of cities involved in World Car Free Day, alongside Jakarta, Brussels, Kuala Lumpar, Copenhagen and Bogota, who totally ban cars from certain roads in their city centres. This allows them to see what their cities could be like without cars, and with significantly less pollution.

Following the recent announcement of banning the manufacture of petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK from 2040, perhaps days like World Car Free Day will be introduced to London, something that was hinted at by Mayor Sadiq Khan according to an article in the Guardian a year ago.

A poll by YouGov in 2016 showed that 63% of Londoners were supportive of motor vehicles being banned from the central third of the city, and 58% were supportive of having a ban every month! Sadly, London has yet to get involved, but smaller areas across the UK are having their own World Car Free Day, including Shoreditch, London and Cardiff, Wales.

Is your local area taking part in World Car Free Day? How will you be getting around?

Drive more efficiently

Next time you get in the car, think about the way you drive. Do you accelerate hard after stopping, or do you gradually increase your speed? Do you brake late when approaching congestion and red traffic lights, even though you’ve seen it coming from far away? Do you check your tyre pressure regularly or only inflate when they’re noticeably low? Do you have your car regularly serviced or do you just do the bare minimum legal requirement?
Driving efficiently could save you money. If your car has the functionality, change the settings so you can monitor your miles per gallon (mpg) so you can get an idea of how efficient your driving is.
The MPG of a car varies depending on several factors, but you can increase the MPG by driving more smoothly (slowing down by allowing the car to come to a stop rather than braking – if safe to do so), accelerating slowly, and regularly servicing your car so that it’s always running in good condition.
For cheaper fuel, use websites like petrolprices.com so you know which is the cheapest garage in a certain area, and remember that motorway service stations tend to charge more than local ones. Filling up in the town near you might be significantly cheaper than pulling into a services (if you can wait!)

Split Ticketing

Use split ticketing apps for your train journeys to find the cheapest way to get to your destination. Split ticketing works on the concept that many journeys are actually cheaper by buying separate tickets for parts of the same journey, rather than buying one ticket for the whole journey. For example, sometimes it may be cheaper to buy a single from London Euston to Milton Keynes and a single from Milton Keynes to Birmingham rather than a ticket from London Euston to Birmingham. There are a few apps and websites like Ticket Clever and Train Pro that can automatically work out the cheapest ticket combinations without affecting your journey. Give it a go next time and see how much you can save.

Use cashback/reward sites

If you do end up paying more money than you’d like for your transport, you might as well be rewarded for it somehow. There are several credit cards that reward spending, like the British Airways AMEX card or the Virgin Atlantic White card. There are also cashback websites that give cashback when booking through companies including National Express and Virgin Trains like TopCashBack and QuidCo to make your purchases work harder.
Supermarket loyalty schemes Nectar and Clubcard also allow you to swap your points for non-supermarket related benefits, like giving you money off train or coach tickets.

Good luck and happy travelling!

Plastic is a hot topic at the moment. One of the ways to cut down on plastic use is by minimising how much plastic you use when it comes to food. Do you order a lot of takeaways/deliveries with lots of plastic tubs? Do you take restaurant leftovers home in plastic? There are some simple ways to keep enjoying your food without increasing the amount of plastic that’s contributing to the mountain of tupperware and ‘bag for life’s stacked up in your kitchen.

Eco your containers

Image source: elephantbox.co.uk

There are companies popping up everywhere now that are focussed on cutting down our use of plastic. Elephant Box is a company that makes metal lunchboxes and related products, so you can take your lunch to work without using plastic in a container that’ll last longer and is easy to clean and chuck into a bag. Putting your sandwich in there means you won’t need to keep replacing your less durable, plastic lunchboxes.
Plastic water bottles are a menace to the ocean, and are also said to be a bacteria-fest if reused too many times, too! To avoid getting in situations where we’re thirsty when we’re out and about and have no choice but to buy one, it’s worth carrying around a metal or glass water bottle that you can take with you everywhere and can be used safely time and time again.

Take a leftovers box with you

Image Source: packagingenvironmental.co.uk

If you often end up unable to eat your entire meal in a restaurant, consider taking your own container in case you need to take some leftovers home. Otherwise you might end up with yet another plastic container to add to your already large stash. If you’ve got a few to spare, take one with you and ask the serving staff to put it in your own container. A bonus is that you’ve already got your lunch packed for the next day!