To ask for your most ingenious money saving tips

[Toothiehurtie]

my Best one is…

a visit to the card factory for cheap cards and gift bags and then picking up presents from car boot sales or charity shops. I have got some brilliant kids party presents for 50p so with the card and a cheap gift bag I have brought the cost of a present in for a pound before.

looking for any tips at all, obviously you can buy porridge oats in bulk cheaper than buying expensive kids cereal etc but anything clever or that people might not have thought of before.

don’t know how bad the fuel crisis will be but considering charging battery packs to charge phones at work and taking a thermos of boiled water home 😂

How is a cold shower good for your mental health, it sounds as depressing as hell.

Also in a hard water area. I use a cleaner every three months. It works out to less than £1 per tablet. Worth £4/yr to prevent limescale build up and expensive repairs.

Can I ask how long a shower that £2.50 amount was based on?

Ignore me - it's 10 minutes, as you clearly stated! Duh!

If there's a boot fair in your local area, it's well worth going.

Get there early and it's amazing what bargains you can find. Clothes, food, toiletries, books, furniture, plants, tools.

The house clearance people sell things especially reasonably, I often buy cleaning products from them and it's worth filling a whole box/bucket full of stuff because they charge so little (think £2.50 for six bottles of kitchen/bathroom/toilet cleaner and a sealed pair of Marigolds plus the bucket!).

If you go regularly then you get to know what people specialise in and what to look out for. There's a man at my local fair who has tables filled with big plastic boxes of toiletries. You have to spend a while sorting through them to find the best goodies but they are only £1 per item and lots of the things would retail for between £7 and £15. Great for presents for people and ideal if you like certain brands or sulphate-free products etc.

Clothes are also usually very reasonable - dresses are often just £1 (or £2 if they still have price tags). If you are prepared to rummage though a pile of clothes on the floor then items are often 50p or three for £1.

It's easy to end up with too much stuff, so you have to remember to try things on as soon as you get home and take the stuff that doesn't suit you to charity. I'm always tickled when a White Stuff/Boden/Fatface dress that I bought for £1 ends up being featured in my local charity shop window for £14! At the moment we're shopping at boot fairs to be green, but if electricity goes up as much as predicted then I many start selling things on Facebook Marketplace as a side hustle.

Oh, I'd love one of those. They're quite expensive though.

I almost never pay for parking. If I go into town I can park in the supermarket for 3 hours - it's a bit more of a walk, but that is a positive for me.

Use quidco for anything I buy online and always do a search first for any discount codes.

Swap supermarkets regularly if they have any offers on. Tesco sent me £6 off £40 last week so they got my custom for one week.

Shop around for the best deals. I will buy a dozen bottle of pesi max if it is on offer as it will last for weeks and I hate to pay full price for it. I do the same for tins - soup, beans etc are always cheaper bulk buying in Farm Foods and using their money off coupon.

Don't buy or use fabric conditioner. White vinegar works just as well and is loads cheaper. Lots of PP have suggested it for cleaning too. I use it in every rinse cycle and line dry everything, or use a ceiling airer. The white vinegar stops towels from going hard, so no need for a tumble drier either.

I have this contraption called a wonderbag- it's like a duvet for a cooking pot. You bring your stew/soup etc to the simmer on the hob, put the lid on then tuck it up inside the wonderbag. The bag keeps the heat in and cooks it slowly like a slow cooker but using zero electricity or gas other than what you used to make it hot in the first place. The bag was about £60 so not cheap, but I imagine it saves it's value over time.

Same here. I need to use lots of powder due to living in a very hard water area. Cheaper than installing a water softener or replacing the washing machine every few years due to limescale damage.

We used to get drain blockages that always seem to be thick white fat, like lard. I never understood as I don't use animal fat in cooking. Then I realised it was bloody fabric conditioner. That stuff is a total waste of time. Haven't used it for over a decade.

thank you @BooksAndChooks

@MakingNBaking could you share a link to the solar power bank? I was looking the other week but ended up down a rabbit hole and never got one 🤣

@Malbecfan
How much white vinegar do you use for a standard size wash please?

My best tip would be to only live in a house that fits your needs not bigger. I will never understand why elderly people live alone in massive houses they can't afford to heat or maintain and as a consequence have to watch every single penny. Somebody across the road from my mum lives in a three bed council house, has disabilities and hasn't been upstairs for 20 years! No carers or family coming to use the space either. He sits in one room with a blanket over him.

@Fairyliz around a tablespoonful. I just give the bottle a bit of a squirt.

I stopped using fabric conditioner and any liquid or pods ages ago, after reading how they gunge up the machine - IIRC it was Piglet John on here who said it.
Sure enough, did an empty very hot wash - unbelievable the amount of dirty grey foam that came out - still more with a 2nd ditto.
Now just use a small amount of powder in the machine with about a dessert spoon of soda crystals - we have hard water so for softening - in the drawer. Washing is perfectly clean and smells fine.

Much cheaper, plus of course no plastic! I do decant the powder into a Wilco plastic box, to prevent any dampness/lumpiness, but that’ll last until after I pop my clogs.

And you think that increase is from staff charging their phones?

One of my first jobs was chopping up chickens for a food services company. Ever since I only ever buy whole red tractor chickens on sell by discount, dissect and freeze. I also buy large joints of other meat on discount and either bone out or cut up e.g. a large rolled shoulder of pork into 3 smaller roasting joints.

I just use a small jar and water - the water needs to reach the roots so don't put the whole lot in a full jam jar.

Re the wonderbag - it's modern version of a hay box.

www.woodland-ways.co.uk/blog/outdoor-cooking/making-and-using-a-hay-box-to-cook-in/

You can use anything that will insulate the pan, so if you have a cool box then add some more insulation you can use that - just remember the insulation needs to be under, around and over the pan - you could use towels, or hay, or some form of packaging nuts (just make sure the pan won't melt them) scrunched up newspaper.

Sainsburys do a quick cook pasta and spaghetti. Only takes 4 minutes to cook as opposed to 9/10. Tastes exactly the same. Also switched to frozen jacket potatoes to save electric on the oven. Only use fresh if it's for something that needs cooking in the oven at the same time

On the saving water theme, we handwash our dishes (just habit) and hardly use the dishwasher. It is hardest to clean stubborn crusted or oily dishes. I get the worst off using kitchen towels.

I bet you are spending more on kitchen towels than it would cost to fill the sink with hot soapy water.

i am confused by “making your shop last 8 days instead of 7”

so were you wasting food before?
or are you now doing smaller portions?

@Applebark

How has your brother works out a 10 min shower costs £2.5?

Our water is very hard. I make washing powder by grating soap and whizzing it together with soda crystals. I mix in some cheap washing powder for a bit of scent and brighteners, but it works out much cheaper than just using powder. I would not do this if I didn't have a food processor - I'd just mix box powder with soda crystals. For whites, I use half and half home made with Ariel.

Anyway, I use a scoop, so half of that is soap powder and the other half is soda - my machine is over twenty years old, and I've been doing this forever, so I don't think it does any harm. I don't use fabric conditioner any more, nor vinegar. Towels aren't as soft and fluffy off line as from tumble dryer, but they're not hard or scratchy.