What thrifty tips do you NOT recommend?

[ArcheryAnnie]

There's been discussion on other threads about some "thrifty tips" which don't seem all that sensible, like rinsing the sauce off spaghetti hoops to reuse the cooked pasta (wastes sauce and calories), or boiling soap to make shower gel (wastes electricity and soap - better just use the soap bar). What other thrifty tips have you either invented or tried, that you would warn other people off?

Here's mine: people have said a pinch of cheap curry powder helps elevate all kinds of dishes, including baked beans, tinned tomatoes, etc, and helps ring the changes in a monotonous diet. Here's what curry powder doesn't elevate, kids: porridge oats. Many, many years ago (pre DS), desperate for something other than plain porridge made with water, which had formed the bulk of our diet all week, we tried currying the porridge with an onion. Now, if I make or buy terrible food, I'll still usually eat it anyway, and just determine not to buy or cook it again. Not so this: oats, curry power and the onion all wasted. Don't ever repeat my mistake!

So if I explained properly - growing your own veg, or cooking in bulk then freezing, or mending clothes to be passed down for younger kids is what I see as ‘thrifty.’ Little ways you can save money you’d otherwise have spent.

Not being able to afford showering/rinsing yourself with your used water/having to rinse spaghetti hoops/reusing toilet paper is what I’d see as quality of life being affected by poverty, rather than thrifty.

My MIL did this!

She lost her balance standing in a bowl, crashed through the shower screen and scraped herself on the laundry basket before hitting the bathroom floor very hard. Her head narrowly missed the sink.

Worst of all, the shower was still running. By the time she'd stopped seeing stars, picked herself up and turned it off, I don't think she saved any water or power at all.

@myfaceismyown - I can't imagine that the cost of power and water makes that in any way economical. Plus time!

A chicken stock cube from Asda is 5p

@Clymene you are eating dry, cold stock cubes??????????????
Also I deliberately gave 2 options that use hardly any power at all. Only to initially bring it to a boil. You need to boil water for a stock cube unless you really are eating it raw.... Ewwww

According to HEAT, using a ring on a hob for an hour costs 42p. So it's nonsense to suggest thar boiling a chicken carcass is cost saving. It makes you feel virtuous though and that's worth a bit.

You mix the stock cube with boiling water from the kettle. Most people have kettles. Fewer have slow cooker and virtually no one I know has a hay box

@Clymene I never said boil it for an hour on a hob - where did that weird idea come from? Boiling a kettle and bringing water to boil in a pan can't be that much different, surely if you put the lid on. If you don't have a slowcooker, bung it in the iven when you are cooking something else. Otherwise make yourself a hay box. You will thank me.
Stock cubes are far less nutritious than stock made from leftovers and you have to buy them. I don't feel virtuous at all. I am just sensible.

Ah Jessica Taylor found a thrifty tip that is definitely NOT a false economy. Recycling this thread for the Daily Fail readership.

@Clymene just adding something else. Boiling a kettle and putting water on a stock cube gives you some thin salty stockish like liquid. Might do for gravy I guess but you need to add other things to turn it into soup. Making your own stock soaks off any residual meat to use for another meal and you get a couple of pints of stock out of it, for gravy or soup etc. My DF used to drink that stock as soup straight away. I tend to thicken it with lentils. Can't imagine just drinking a stock cube as soup.

@Zestro if Daily Fail want to contact me I can give simple instructions on a DIY hay box.. Recycling the recycling!

I tried using bicarb of soda as per one of those supposedly amazing hacks. What a bloody mess! Ended up spending ages trying to get it all off again and using a branded oven cleaner. I could still see powdery bits weeks later.

Used to love a "raw" Oxo cube when I was a child. That or a sugar lump! I also realised that if I had to do a sink wash as a child i never had a flannel - just soaped with my hand. Oh and put each foot in the sink!

I want to opologise to the OP for going off on a bit of a DIY stock tangent - didn't meant to thread hijack
There are tips I have been given that are rubbish. Be careful with the yellow stickers unless you can eat the thing straight away. In my early married years we bought all the cheap stuff and froze it then realised we were spending more keeping the freezer running full of yellow stickers than we were saving with reduced food. We often did not dig through it until it was dried out and inedible.
Pound shops - you can often get the same items for less than a pound in your normal shop. Also we never just go there and spend one pound, it all seems so cheap you buy things you don't need.
I was told it was as cheap to cook double the amount of rice you need then eat it with salad or stir fry next day. Rice quickly develops Bacillus cereus bacteria at room temperature. It gave us all upset tums...

@LakieLady

Stanley do a brilliant range of travel mugs that last 6-8 hours hot , my vistas swears by them but they aren't cheap

Hand wash. Always buy the most expensive you can. It will put a smile on your face

Hard agree. The quality of the Aldi own brand stuff is (generally) just so good. I think if you did a like for like comparison with Sainsbos or Tesco's own brand, Aldi would be both score much higher on taste tests and cost much less.

One example from recently - Sainsburys aluminium recyclable coffee pods are 25p per pod and absolutely insipid (not just me, the reviews)
Aldi's top strength aluminium recyclable pods are TWELVE PENCE per pod - less than half price - and are unbelievably good, like posh cafe good.

I realise that my example couldn't be more in the 'middle class thrifty tips' camp sorry but the same goes for everything else we buy, which is a mixture of freezer chips and nugget/ pizza crap for the teenage kids, fresh fruit/veg and vegan ready meals for us, and everything in between. Their rice/grain pouches - great taste, very filling, very nutritious, much much cheaper than any other supermarket at (I think) 35p for Mexican rice with sweetcorn and beans.

@WinterDeWinter the post is about bad tips, not good ones for the middle classes...

Put Tupperware boxes outside now to fill up with hot air. Put them in the cupboard and then use to boost the heat on a cold winters day.

The soap trick really does not work in hard water areas (also see the washing powder idea mentioned by PP; powder for washing machines is low foam). Bar soap reacts to calcium salts present in hard water to form an unpleasant scum.

What, you mean like every single fashion article in the Telegraph ever?

I second the cheap tea bags and thin bin bags suggestions. Life is my morning cuppa and cheap bags are crap cos you have to use 3 at once!!

Which is why I apologised for my example - but my overall point is relevant because it shows that ‘go to Aldi’ is not a shit tip for people who are really struggling.

In all the supermarket v. Aldi examples, everyone seems to compare with sainsbury's.
Try Asda.
My weekly shop in Asda is the same price as Aldi, but better. More choice and veg always lasts the week, unlike Aldi.
I don;t buy branded items at all, and Asda own brand are fine on pretty much everything (their smart price is sometimes too thin/breaks/doesn't taste good, but their normal own brand range is fine)

I have never got the Aldi/Lidl love (apart from Lidl's bakery, but that is hardly cheap) mainly because I cannot buy everything I need for a week in Aldi, so that means going to Asda as well, which once I factor in time and extra petrol, wipes out any savings

and all this stock nonsense. So many posters miss the point that to make your own you have to have first eaten a roast chicken. If you are struggling for food etc, you don't /can't buy a whole chicken and the fuel cost to roast it are high, and if living in temporary/poor accommodation you probably don't have an oven. And don't have a freezer to store the cooked stock afterwards. And are not making complex dishes involving chicken stock anyway, because of fuel poverty etc. etc.

So much lack of understanding about fuel poverty and level of housing.

Also, so many of these tips expect you to have a high level of cooking/sewing/gardening skills which are just not common.