Frugal housekeeping tips

[Coolminty]

As title suggests really, need to drastically reduce spending in all areas of our lives. Gone are the days of wasting £100 in home bargains on nice smelling cleaning products which isn’t such a bad thing. I’ll start :

amazon do 4 x 5l of white vinegar that can be used for all sorts, fabric softener, glass cleaner, getting rid of smells etc

Washing up liquid can be used in place of a lot of other soap cleaners diluted in a spray bottle. I sometimes add a few drops of lemon or eucalyptus oil to get my nice smelling fix

Keep meals simple, look for 4 ingredient recipes and such.

anyone else have any tips to share?

Ooh, that's a great tip @LadySpratt.

I've been trying to reuse old plastic bags (when cleaning out the cat litter tray here, but the safety holes sometimes make them unsuitable) for environmental reasons - if you reuse every item of single use plastic once, that's a 50% reduction in the number of items needed straight off so always worth doing.

I'm a single parent with young kids. If you factor in the time and money it takes us to get out of the house it is worth it.

I always have the long life milk in the cupboard for emergencies, never enough space in the freezer!

Zoflora desinfecant is also cheap, smells nice and can be used everywhere.

Cook in batches. Plan meals. Go shopping with a list. Freeze leftovers.

Keep toast bread/ rolls the fridge or freezer.

I have a spreadsheet and key in items from shopping receipts to see our food shopping breakdown to figure out how and where savings can be made.

Go for cheaper alternatives. Asda/ tesco brand tampons and Lild cotton buds are as good as leading brands and half the price.

I'm on a hunt for good quality and not expensive toilet paper!

Yes I agree a freezer would be seen as a basic for many people. It does save us money. Once we open a jar of tomato paste, any excess is immediately put in ice cube trays and frozen. If I need a few tablespoons for cooking I just nudge out a couple of tomato paste ice cubes. I also keep all chicken trimmings in a bag in the freezer till I have enough to make chicken stock with a bit of carrot, onion and parsley which I freeze. (The fat rises to the top and solidifies so you can lift it off so don't worry about fat going into the scrap bag because it won't end up in the finished product.)

We do freeze milk as well. More convenient to do so in smaller bottles rather than trying to defrost 3 litres in an even way.

We freeze casseroles as I tend to cook double batches and freeze the extra. We don't have takeaways very often - fish and chips versus coq au vin in the freezer?

I have found that washing celery, drying it with a tea towel and wrapping it in foil in the refrigerator gives it near immortality. It stays crisp and green for a couple of weeks rather than becoming khaki and floppy within the week. Apparently, the same applies to broccoli but I haven't yet tried that personally.

If you forgot to get the celery prepared and stored and are confronted with the wilting remains, do not despair. Cut the stalks to usable size and soak in cold water for an hour or so and the celery will crisp up.

If you are suspicious that the that fish is not super fresh, soak it in some milk with a load of thyme in it, trim the ends of fillets (this bit is important) and it should taste delightfully fresh when you flour it and pan fry it. (I'm not talking about fish that is off here obviously - just the sort than can taste a little fishy.)

Parsley grows like a weed in our garden so I like to use a bit of that in most dishes as it gives it an extra green boost. Thankfully, we have the flat European version rather than the unpleasantly curly stuff. I am not sure about growing a lemon tree in the UK but they are a useful plant.

Anything that looks like it might go off before we get to eat it gets put in the freezer before it has a chance to go bad.

I have to confess though that my freezer is taller than me and I'm not short! Modern freezers simply don't have as much internal storage as in the past. When we redid our kitchen - it dated from the 1980s with red Formica and made builders chuckle - we found modern appliances were tiny inside.

If we have an Indian takeaway the mint sauce etc comes in little pots, I clean them and use them in the kids lunchboxes and then it doesn't matter if they lose lids etc.
I buy a lot of milk and have two freezers, one upright and one small chest (household of 7) and I've never frozen milk. How long does a 4 Pinter take to defrost?
I use method eco friendly floor cleaner to mop, it's lemon and ginger and smells really fresh, it was £2 and a little in hot water is plenty. Asda do a wood floor cleaner, I think it was pine and Jasmine or something and it's big and less than £2 so lasts well.
I also reuse foil on baking trays for example, if I was cooking breaded chicken one night and knew the next night was battered fish or something or garlic bread.
I was always really sceptical about frozen veg but I tried frozen broccoli recently and it was fine! Plus so much less waste.

We use the old plastic takeaway containers to freeze meat in meal size portions or single meal sized portions of leftovers or batch cooking.

@blackOrWhite we get asdas shades brand which is £7.50 for 24 rolls. We also use aldi. They've stopped doing it now but Asda used to do smart price toilet roll and I did get complaints then but I was paying for it lol, but it was false economy as we had to use more.
I'm really struggling to find dried noodles at the minute and we have those at least once a week with chicken and veg.

Mob kitchen do a great carrot dahl
chickpea & sweet potato curry - if anyone had a favourite recipe let me know, I keep trying

bread maker to make bread or dough for pizza

oven chips and breaded fish or battered fish in freezer is a quick through it in the oven dinner for Friday night - ££££ cheaper than takeaway

pinch of nom do a few takeaway recipes, I chop and prepare on a Wednesday or Thursday and have everything ready to cook for a Friday or Saturday

TikTok have some great slow cooker budget recipes- dead easy & cheap. Double up and freeze half for the last week of the month

Once we open a jar of tomato paste, any excess is immediately put in ice cube trays and frozen. If I need a few tablespoons for cooking I just nudge out a couple of tomato paste ice cubes.

This is brilliant! Wish I'd thought of this instead of scraping mouldy remains into the compost bin.

the bags that the loo rolls come in, use as bin bags

my go to loo paper is Waitrose
i wont use anything else

Haveatakeaway run cold water over container
Pop in sink overnight, then some milk will be defrosted by morning, but not all - though probably enough to use. Then keep in fridge and it’ll defrost slowly

i dont use shower gel
i use soap
no lenor either

Pesto is another one I do this with.

Also slice up any lemons that need using and freeze to use in drinks.

do you keep the icecube trays in a bag?
how do you know what is in the cubes?
pesto/ragu/thai paste?

We don’t have a Tesco nearby. I have never found white vinegar in any of our major supermarkets but agree Amazon can be more expensive for certain things.

my local market uses to do huge bags of toilet roll for £5, I don’t have a car at the moment so haven’t been yet to see if they still do but might be worth a check for anyone else

Follow Nancy Birtwhistle on Instagram, she has loads of great ideas for natural cleaning products, and also keeping food fresh (she has a carrot in her fridge that's been there for over 10 weeks and still looks perfect! 😆).

I reuse any plastic bags in the bin, bread bags, grey mailing bags, if there are a couple of holes I use sellotape over them.
Lidl cleaning products are as good as the branded
I use frozen onions, peppers, cauliflower and broccoli then there’s no waste
wash almost everything at 20 or cold with half the amount of detergent
look at world war 2 and USA depression era tips and recipes

sell white vinegar groceries.asda.com/product/malt-vinegar/asda-distilled-malt-vinegar/19241

We can use plastic bags in our food waste bin and they also fit this well

I just discovered the Love Clothes website which is a spin-off from Love Food Hate Waste. Lots of good ideas about laundry, repairs etc including simple guides and videos for people like me who cannot sew. It has given me the confidence to think I could have a go and so I am now looking out for a second hand sewing machine to get me started!

Love Food Hate Waste also has loads of good advice about correct food storage, how to freeze all sorts if things, using up leftover etc.

I use them for handwashing any delicates (obviously not if allergic). Or save to re-gift.

Keep a few lemons, limes and a bit of ginger in the freezer. I just grate the ginger straight from frozen for any currys etc. The lemons and limes go in the microwave for a minute or two and I have fresh juice for any recipes/mojitos. I suppose I could squeeze and freeze in an ice cube tray too, but I'm lazy.

Freeze any wine you don't like for use in cooking, also any leftover cream.

We haven't used fabric softener for years now and it hasn't made one bit of difference to our clothes.

Use washing machine and dishwasher on the eco settings.

i did use the eco setting on my washing machine yesterday,
it takes 205 minutes
i wonder if it is worth it? i am not sure i will repeat that experience

I read quite a good thread on eco setting a while ago.

I think they work by soaking the clothes for a long time rather than by repeatedly rinsing and agitation. So they do save on electric and water.

I have a Bosch washing machine and you can see that that eco uses less energy than all the other settings. Quick wash is one of the most energy intensive even though it only takes 15-30 mins.

If you look up your own model you might be able to find out how much water and energy each setting uses.