What essentials and non essentials have you stopped buying?

[fateisdestined2025]

Essentials will soon be bread…will try to make homemade bread…

non essentials will be unhealthy snacks like chocolate and cakes, air freshener, furniture polish and other cleaning products.

Jar sauces. I make my own now

Handwash. we use soap or bath foam decanted into glass bottles.

Same

Depends what you're making. The husband makes a nice sourdough and the ingredients are about 50p per loaf.

I haven't but my eyes popped out when I saw Heinz tomato ketchup priced at £4. £4 for a bottle of Tommy K!

Making own food sauces and other stuff is great, but is time consuming. By the time you chop, blend, buy the ingredients, and most of all use fuel to cook it and water to wash all those damn pots and pans, any money saved is gone! Better for you than UPF though I suppose in the end.

I do make my own wholemeal soda bread once a week and freeze in chunky slices, but the mess OMG! Flour everywhere, a bowl for this, a spoon for that, a baking tray, and the clean up drives me nuts.

Maybe I'm just a lazy old sod though!

i have stopped buying expensive washing powder/liquid, and dishwashing tablets, I’m onto aldi’s own dupe brand and have stopped softener completely. I go through at least 6-8 bottles of washing liquid a month, it’s just silly money now, literally money down the drain. The softener I use I kinda miss as I love the smell round my house when dryer is on but not enough to warrant the cost. Marmite opinion but i don’t notice any difference now from cheap to expensive brands. My clothes are clean. And saving myself £ £40-50 a month on more common and expensive brands.

For environmental reasons - cling film.

I use tupperwear boxes or cloth food covers now.

Every time I make bread I’m astounded by how expensive it is, and the main reason we buy loaves rather than always make them is cost - so I’m not sure switching to home made will make economic sense for you.

Crikey, how much washing do you do? I switched from persuaded non bio to Tesco's own at about a third of the price. It may have been non bio but it kicked off dh's contact dermatitis.

Same. I just can't stomach paying that much for chocolate and I'm a life-long chocoholic too. Same with cleaning products. White vinegar, fairy liquid and the steamer do 90% of the job.

What recipe, what ingredients and where is he buying them from? I can’t even buy the flour needed for a sourdough recipe for that much?

Visits to coffee shops with my 4 year old. Very expensive for just a coffee for me and a juice and snack for him. So now I refuse to go in with him.

6-8 a month!! Honestly get a 1.45 litre bottle of fairy washing up liquid is £3.58 in asda.

I used to get aldi magnum 1 litre and go through it in 2 weeks, now get the fairy stuff it lasts months

Stopping regular snacks and chocolate.

Buy supermarket brands more and try and get reduced section meat which I freeze.

Bread flour is about 1.30 a bag and we'd get three loaves from that. A bit of yeast, sugar, salt and water/milk. Making bread isn't expensive (Well maybe the oven cost is!)

I mean you can get a bottle of handwash for a quid so I'm not sure how you're saving by using bubble bath. Bet the glass bottles cost you more!

I was still buying everything I always did in Tesco when I had a lightbulb moment as the realisation dawned on me that I was having the piss taken out of me with the price hikes. Have now been buying their own brand stuff and it’s perfectly fine. Saved about £90 this week.

The only ingredients you pay for with sourdough are the flour and a tiny amount of salt, and he uses 350g per loaf. So with flour at about £1.30 for 1.5kg, 50p a loaf max feels about right?

@MyTommyGunDont with organic flour it's probably more like 60p a loaf, I suppose?

Bread isn’t expensive? Baking it would be though by the time you bought ingredients and the cost of electricity for the oven.

Buy Fairy - it really does last loads longer!

I stopped buying magazines a while back as I expensive.
I generally try not to waste money anyway but still buy the usual things but only what we need.

I’ve done the opposite. I’ve started buying bakery bread and butchers meat over supermarket. I’m just buying a lot less. Or using the bread as the meal - sandwich for dinner or soup.
if we don’t support the little businesses we lose them, but I appreciate £2.00 for a loaf is more than the 50-70p in a supermarket and isn’t for everyone’s budget etc.
shopping local keeps money local

The recipe I had said bread flour which is a lot more expensive, but yeah fair enough!

If you're making bread with a sachet of yeast at home then the cost probably goes up to about 70p, I suppose