Using up the last - Part 2 and a Mini Challenge

 

Yesterdays post highlighted to me how on the ball we all are. 

 

We all seem to be so good at getting every pennys worth of our hard earned money from the things we buy.  We turn things upside down (gravity is a brilliant thing isn't it), we scrape out jars and bowls with our flexi spatulas.

 

 

 

 

 

 I bought a brilliant one last year with a large spatula at one end and a tiny one at the other it cost me £3.50, reduced from some silly price in a kitchen shop sale but I can honestly say it is possibly the best £3.50 I have ever spent.  I must have saved the price of it during it's first month of use and it still looks new now. (Mine's the one on the left, and yes it's in my favourite colour green.)

 

We snip tops off tubes and plastic bottles to get at every last little bit of the precious stuff inside.  A good tip I picked up last year from a Blog, was to save the snipped off end (off a tube of hand cream for instance) and then use this as a new lid, by pushing it over the cut end you keep the air out and keep the contents fresher by not leaving them exposed to the open air to dry out, it really works!

 

Another thing we all do that came over loud and clear was diluting.   Nearly everything we use can be diluted or the container it comes in can be rinsed to get every little drop of product out of.  When I think my bubble bath is all gone I simply fill the bottle with water and leave it until my next bath, there is usually enough left to give me a semblance of one more bubbly bath even if I do not luxuriate like the folk you see in the movies with their dignity intact because of masses of bubbles :-)

 

All food containers are rinsed out, jars of pasta sauce, tins of tomatoes etc etc, you need them rinsed out anyway even if they are just going into the recycling box so why not rinse them out and extract every last bit of foodie goodness to actually eat.

 

 

 

I always dilute my washing up liquid, we use Fairy and buy it when it is on special offer.   We have tried buying cheaper brands but they never last as long nor perform as well so it's diluted Fairy all the way for us.  We use a third of a bottle of liquid to two thirds of water and this gives us plenty of soapy suds to get all the pots clean and enough power to cut through any grease.  When the diluted mix has all been used the bottle gets filled with water and shaken this is then poured under a running tap and then the top gets taken off the bottle and dropped into the bowl so every little vestige of liquid trapped in the grooves gets used for one final bowl of pots, then and only then is a new dilution made up.

I'd say one bottle of diluted liquid lasts us around two to three weeks, and I use this for lots of cleaning purposes not just pots.  So a full bottle of Fairy bought when on offer should last us between six and nine weeks, for one pound I call this real value for money.  So the bottles I bought here should last us anything up to a year!!

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I am setting myself a Mini Challenge this week.

 

 

I have these, the last of my fresh potatoes ....

 

 

 

... and these, found lurking in the depths of the freezer.

 

How many meals or part meals can I make out of them?

 

How many could you do?

 

Sue xx