To ask who is spending £13 on sanitary products per month?

[avocuddl]

Just watching This Morning on period poverty. I appreciate this may be a real issue but I just can't work out the costs stated on the website under 'The Facts' www.freeperiods.org/mission
£18k over a lifetime which equals £13 per month.

The MP said she'd spent £25 on one period?

I buy the always £1 pack and they're fine! A pack of paracetamol is like 20p?

Sorry if this has been done before but aibu?

"You can buy a pack of 20 applicator tampons in Aldi for 65p"

Perhaps that 65p is enough for some women but for many of us with heavy flows its a pitiful amount. I also can't use cups (which I have tried) because they all fill up too fast and spill everywhere when I try to remove them, leaving me with blood all over my hands and sometimes clothes. Not a good look in the office loos.

Maybe it includes missing days of work too?

Reading this makes me sad to see how much some women suffer with periods. A pack of pads lasts me a couple of months, I rarely have to take any pain relief and every month I get annoyed when my period starts because I hate having to wear pads for a few days. I will count myself lucky from now on.

When the MP first said that I calculated I had been spending pre-surgery somewhere in the region of £25-30 per period. That included prescriptions but that only brought it down to just over £13. It was due to the sheer amounts of products I needed to use. Eventually I moved to a mooncup which saved a lot but not on towels. I have friends who used yearly the amount of tampons I used in two periods. I also have friends in a very similar position to where I was. There's not a one size fits all cost.

Thankfully I can now get away with just some reusable san-pro.

I could easily spend that much per month. Prescription tablets every two months = £4.50 a month. Two packs of Lillets at round £3.50 a month (one isn't enough, two more than enough) is already at £8. Then add in painkillers - I need ibuprofen for 3-4 days at a minimum which is about 2 packs, plus occasionally paracetamol as well depending on how bad it is.

Then factor in the fact that sometimes I have to pay stupid prices for painkillers because I live rurally and can't always get to a cheap shop around work and sometimes run out. And the fact that I need to make sure I have a supply of tampons, pills and painkillers at work, home and in my car just in case - it all adds up.

I work for a foodbank and one of the items we deal with is SanPro. As interestingly it is not well taken up by our users we work with the local colleges to supply their students through our donations. What took me by surprise is that in what everyone claims is a realtively affluent area the college staff were spending upwards of £100 a month on SanPro for their girls who were simply not being provided with it at home.

I could easily spend the quoted figure on SanPro and drugs without the replacement clothes etc added in. Some folks get a much easier time of it than others - and things change as life changes too.

PookieDo
Baby powder is a life saver (for external chaffing of course, any "internal" issue I have no advice for)

You could need a prescription every month, I used to.
Then there's pain killers and your means of san pro.
travel to the doctors, it all adds up.

You can buy a pack of 20 applicator tampons in Aldi for 65p

fabulous, I can only spend 65p for my showers.
I still need something for the rest of the time though. And I don't shop in Aldi because they don't deliver and I do online shops.

I don't spend that much, and when I've been skint I've just used wads of toilet paper and it was OK tbh, not ideal but not that bad. I wouldn't call my periods particularly light either. Obviously people have far heavier flows than mine though, so it's impossible to come up with one figure for everyone. Its strange what we become accustomed to - thinking about it the collateral discomfort and inconvenience is significant but every month we just all get on with it.

@LittleOwl153 , I offered to make some reusables for our local food bank and this offer was rejected. I offered to buy some and donate and this offer was also rejected. Pity, really.

Pookie - as long as sheets have been washed the staining doesn’t bother me. Honestly cold salty water and a cool wash (40 or less) with biological detergent gets most staining out. Floral pjs are good as stains blend in with the pattern.

I don’t understand squeamishness over a washed stain. Not enough to throw things out anyway.

@Thatsalovelycuppatea

I’ve been getting the 100 denier cotton tights from Tesco. They don’t ladder and are soft and I don’t end up with thrush either

I am clearly doing something wrong with bloodstains despite salt water soaks and vanish I usually cannot fully get them out and end up with a lovely brown stain. I usually wear the brown stained items in secret and replace with sale items. Sofa I can’t wash in a machine only hand scrubbing and has brown stains. Mattress I just replace mattress protector if I can’t get a deep stain out. Depends how long it’s been there - if it’s a heavy one there all night it’s more challenging

Nonsense. You can buy a pack of 20 applicator tampons in Aldi for 65p.

And I would have leaked through within ten minutes. I get so fucked off with the attitude of some women towards other, when it comes to periods. I would remove the Ramon and pad, replace tampon (for heavy bleeds btw), have shower, then have to replace tampon. I had endometriosis and £20 would have been a cheap month. The cheap tampons and pads were absolutely no use to me. I expect many men to be pig ignorant about periods, but had hoped for a little less ignorance from women.

thedisorganisedmum, just a heads up that use of talc has been linked to ovarian cancer. You might want to check that out.

Mine were so irregular that in my 20s I was using towels for moths on end as a precaution.

Anyone here considering reusables?
absolutely not. I have no interest in rinsing away blood soaked clothes and running special loads of laundry. If some women prefer them, by all means, but I am not.

Tampon, not Ramon. Even the spellcheck is pissing me off!!

Finished now but after DD2 I used to put 2 Lilets super plus extra in at a time plus doubled maxi pads if I was at home and a Tena pad if I was leaving the house - often needed to change every 30-40 minutes. No idea what that cost but a good 5 days of heavy flow and then 3 where I could get away with a "super" tampon and a pad. As these Lilets are very hard to get hold of - not everywhere stocks them, I used to clear out Superdrug whenever I saw them. 10 years of that - and no investigation ever threw up anything wrong. Also £10 a month for medication and iron tablets on a prepayment certificate. I also used to buy the disposable bed pads - I'd sleep on a black towel with one of these slipped in underneath to try and avoid staining. All my pj bottoms had to be a plain dark colour and even then they had horrible crotch stains. So easily £20 + a month . I've always had heavy periods and never could understand the TV adds that showed women shoving in a miniscule tampon to keep them "safe and dry" all day. I guess I just don't have dainty ladylike little periods....

Underthemo0n
I know, never used any of that stuff for my kids, but I have used some on me when the chaffing pain is too bad. It's instant relief! (external use of course)

My period only lasts 4 days. I buy a big pack of Always for about £2.50 when it is on offer (usually at Wilko). It will last me 2 months (2 cycles) before I have to buy more.

I am usually someone who buys supermarket brands but I can only get on with Always. I've tried other brands but they're just not absorbent enough and they give me rashes down there

You can buy a pack of 20 applicator tampons in Aldi for 65p.

And? My nearest ALDI is a 45 minute drive away from me, in the opposite direction to work - so hardly somewhere I can just pop into on my way home. I also can't use any tampon that expands lengthways as I find them really uncomfortable and it makes my pain worse. I also find cheap tampons are a false economy because they don't last as long, and often cause leaking which means changing underwear more often.

No maybe I shouldn’t be ashamed of having brown stains on my bedding or sofa, and shall go back out into the dating world, brown crotch stains and all and embrace my woman hood with abandon.

I bled profusely all over a new boyfriend during sex once. It was dark and I only realised once I felt my hand was damp. Light on - like a crime scene. He was

Its not just the sanitary towels and tampons. If a woman have a painful period she might need prescription painkillers. Or if its too painful to work then sickleave - many employers do not pay sick pay now.

I'd have a lot more respect for the figures if they stated that some people spend up to x amount. I have dreadful periods and take tx acid to slow the flow. I probably spend around 4 pounds per month on a bad one.
I buy those huge bulky towels 1 pound for 10 in Tesco. Then thinner pads for 45p in lidl. Super plus tampons iirc around 3.00 for a big box. As for clothing I have black underwear and black leggings.
I think its disingenuous to suggest you'd wear light colours by choice because you don't feel like wearing black although I appreciate you can get caught out if your period arrives early.