Your Cheapskates Club Newsletter 33:17
In this Newsletter
1. Cath's Corner
2. In the Tip Store - Dishwasher Savings; No Cost Hand wash; Buy Nothing and Still Have What You Need
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Corn Fritters
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - How to Build Your Stockpile Part 2
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Last Week's Question - How to clean a leather lounge without spending a fortune
8. Ask Cath
9. Join the Cheapskates Club
10. Frequently Asked Questions
11. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
We've had some glorious, much needed rain this week. The ground is soft, the water barrel is full and best of all most of it has fallen overnight, so our days have been dry, windy and even sunny - my ideal way for it to rain.
I put some buckets out on Tuesday night to catch the free water, and poured them into the rain barrel. We pay a lot for water and I'm always looking for ways to cut down our use and the cost. Catching water in buckets may seem trivial and hardly worth the fraction of a cent it saves, but every drop counts, especially in the hot summer when I use what I catch to water the garden that feeds us. Every drop we don't have to pay for is more cash freed up for us to use on something we want.
There is a saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves".
That's living the Cheapskates way. We watch the little, seemingly insignificant, expenses because they're the ones that do the most damage to our finances. A dollar here, five dollars there, 50 cents here, doesn't add up to much - once. But spend that money without thinking and without a plan often and before long those little expenses will add up to one big one.
My challenge to you this week is to stop and think before you spend that $3 on a magazine or $8 on lunch or $2 on an ice-cream, or $3.50 on a paper pack. If you really want it and you have the cash to pay for it, you may choose to buy it. But if you have the cash on you to pay for it and don't really want or need it, put it back. Walk away. Then write down (or make a note on your phone) what it was and how much you didn't spend.
Next Wednesday night, add up how much you didn't waste on little, unimportant stuff this week. Then give your Emergency Fund a boost and shift that money straight into it.
We're into week three of our birthday month and this week yearly Cheapskates Club membership is on sale for $25 for the first year until 8pm Wednesday 23rd August 2017 (new memberships only).
Have a great week everyone and enjoy your not spending.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Dishwasher Savings
For those of you, who like me find that cheap dishwasher tablets don't clean as well as the Finish Brand. Did you know you can cut the dishwasher tablets in half? This is best done with the Dishwasher Tablets which require no unwrapping and not the gel style ones. I find I get twice as many washes out of the dishwasher tablets pack for half the price and there is no difference to the quality of the wash. Also saving the environment from extra chemicals.
Contributed by Shaye Pascoe
No Cost Hand Wash
I simply put a little water into my hair shampoo bottle when I can no longer get any shampoo out, give a swirl around and put that straight into the foam hand wash bottle. Marvellous, costs nothing and I have a continuous supply of hand wash.
Contributed by Judith Barclay
Buy Nothing and Still Have What You Need
My girlfriend, who was moving house, put me onto this awesome face book page!!
It is called Buy Nothing/(then your suburb). This fb page is where locals post items they no longer want and you can be considered to get the items for FREE - yes, FREE!
You need to be over 18 years of age (believe me I definitely am!) and you need to state some streets around where you live -then you ask them if they will sign you up to be on the group fb page whereby you can start pursuing items that people around you no longer want and you can ask to be considered to get the items for FREE - no money ever exchanges hands. It's as easy as that!!
People in our area have given away toaster, bookshelves, stereo systems, trampolines, clothes, blankets, oranges, lounge suites, swing sets, brand new baby clothes......the list is endless! Just like Xmas - so exciting - I’ve now become an active fb user lol.
This face book page also enables you to ask if locals have items you may wish to borrow or have. Someone just asked for and was loaned a heater for this winter!
So the Cheapskate way!!!
Contributed by Helen Joy
There are currently more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
3. Submit your Tip
The Cheapskate's Club website is over 3,000 pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club. We publish a Winning Tip each Thursday, so enter your great money, time or energy saving idea now.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Submit your tip
4. On the Menu
Corn Fritters
When you need a quick and easy, tasty lunch or tea, corn fritters fit the bill. They pack nicely in lunchboxes, and are good hot or cold. We like them cold with salad, or warm with veggies and relish. However we have them, they're delicious and budget friendly. Don't have a tin of creamed corn? Use frozen corn kernels, just whizz about 1/2 cup before adding to the batter.
Corn Fritters
Ingredients:
1-½ cups self-raising flour
1 cup milk
1 440g tin creamed corn
1 egg, beaten
pinch salt
1 tsp mixed herbs
Oil for frying
Method:
Mix all ingredients, except oil, together until well combined. Heat oil in heavy based fry pan. Drop tablespoonfuls of mixture into oil. Cook until brown on bottom, about 2 minutes. Turn and cook other side until golden and brown. Remove from pan and drain on paper towel before serving.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Tuna mornay with rice
Tuesday: Pasta Bake
Wednesday: Vegetable curry, steamed rice, naan
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Stir-fry
Saturday: Corn Fritters & salad
In the fruit bowl: Bananas, oranges
In the cake tin: Boiled fruit cake, cup-cakes, ANZAC slice
There are over 1,500 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
How to Build Your Stockpile Part 2
Way back when I first started monthly grocery shopping and stockpiling, I realised pretty quickly that we use basically the same groceries month after month, with slight changes to the list to accommodate changes in season: the summer list is slightly different to the winter list. Otherwise I'm a very boring shopper :)
Boring it may be, but it makes it very easy to build a stockpile within my grocery budget.
Before I go shopping I always do a quick inventory of the pantry, fridge and freezer, then write my shopping list according to the gaps in the inventory.
When you start to build your stockpile, I suggest you inventory your pantry, fridge and freezer too. It will very quickly show you the gaps, what you have enough of and what you won't need to buy for another two years (or so….).
Doing the inventories will also give you a chance to tidy the pantry, clean the fridge and defrost the freezer. These three food storage areas need to be ready to start taking your stockpile as you build it.
If you need to rearrange things do; I've swapped the tea and coffee from the top shelf in the pantry to an overhead cupboard in the kitchen that just had vases (very ugly vases), odd glasses and a couple mugs in it. Those things have all been donated to the op shop. Now the cupboard holds 12 boxes of tea bags, four 500g tins of Nescafe (on sale this week for $14.99 at IGA stores), four boxes of hot chocolate pods and 24 boxes of coffee pods. And the pantry shelf is free to hold other things I use more often.
It is important to remember, as you start to stockpile, to keep things handy and like with like. If they are too hard to get to you'll forget where they are or worse still, just not bother to dig them out. And that's money down the drain, another reason to organise your food storage!
Keeping like with like just means keeping tins together, baking ingredients together, cereals together, condiments together and on.
Once you've done your inventories, you'll be able to calculate how much of each thing you need to last the length of your stockpile. At the moment, I'm aiming for 12 months of everything for my family of five.
There is a (perhaps) handy sheet you can download here (link courtesy of The Prudent Homemaker) that will tell you roughly how much of each thing you'll need per person for a year.
I'm not sure the quantities are quite accurate - according to this table I'd need to stockpile 104 kilos of pasta and 154 kilos of rice! As we eat lots of different foods, those quantities are not right for us, but they give you an idea of just how big your stockpile will need to be.
I've calculated that I will need 30 kilos of pasta - a huge difference. We eat one pasta dish a week (my boys love pasta!) and I use approximately 500g of spaghetti or noodles each time. That equates to 26 kilos a year. Adding a couple of kilos for pasta salads and casseroles brings the total for the year to 30 kilos - for the five of us. By the way, I have pasta covered - there is 37 kilos in the stockpile at the moment, enough for the next 15 months.
Twenty kilos of rice will be enough, that's what I buy each year now. Yes, we eat a lot of rice, in savoury and sweet dishes, mainly because I just like it and not just because it's cheap :)
Take a look at the sheet and see how the numbers compare to what you've estimated you'll need after doing your inventories. You might be a little surprised, like I was, or you could be completely in agreement.
How much you need to stockpile will depend on your family's size, how long you want the stockpile to last, what you eat and/or use and how much of each thing you use and/or eat and where you are going to store it.
Next week I'll share the things I'm stockpiling, the quantities I've estimated we will need for one year and where in the house it's all going to be stored.
Do you know everything you need in your stockpile? Do you know how much of each thing you use now? And how much you'd need to build your stockpile to maintenance mode?
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
Most popular forum posts this week
Buying in Season
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3625-300-A-Month-Food-Challenge-14-8-17-Buying-In-Season
Something Old Something New
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3616-Something-Old-Something-New
Where do you Grocery Shop?
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?23-Where-do-you-grocery-shop
Most popular blog posts this week
MOO Instant Custard
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2017/08/moo-instant-custard.html
No Bake Lemon Slice and our Favourite Variations
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2017/08/no-bake-lemon-slice-and-our-favourite.html
Paying too Much to Clear Your Debt
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2011/11/paying-too-much-to-clear-your-debt.html
7. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Rebecca who wrote
"I have been given a beautiful cream coloured leather lounge but I can see a few marks and dirt on it. What do I use to clean it? I feel like it needs a good scrub with a scourer but obviously that would wreck the leather. Any suggestions?
Irene Wilkinson answered
On a leather lounge just use warm water and Sunlight soap with a soft rag or sponge. Works wonders.
Kate Crawford answered
My mum has a pale yellow couch, and we treat it the same as cleaning our saddles for horse riding.
First clean the dirt off, using a gentle glycerine base soap on a damp rag, followed by a damp rag to wipe off any soapy residue. Try not to soak the leather in water as it hardens when it dries and is then more prone to cracking.
When all the gunk is washed off, follow by giving it a good feed with leather oil (usually a mineral oil with a bit of beeswax or carnauba wax added). Smear the whole surface with the oil, let it soak in for a few minutes before buffing any excess off with a clean lint free cloth.
This is also ideal for cleaning leather clothing (but not suede). If you have access to the interior side of the leather it will really drink up the oil, and keep it supple for years to come.
Suede you just brush the dirt off with a stiff brush or toothbrush...water will leave marks, so best to spray it with a sealant like scotch guard when you first get it home.
Cathy Morcom answered
I use this on all my leather:
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
10 drops of lemon or orange essential oil
Mix all ingredients well into a small bowl.
Vacuum the lounge, then ssing paper towel, work in small areas in a circular motion, GENTLY RUBBING the mixture into the leather, until you have cleaned the whole lounge. Use clean paper towel to wipe off the cleaner. If the lounge is left really shiny wipe it over again with clean paper towel.
8. Ask Cath
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
9. Join the Cheapskates Club
For just 10 cents a day you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
10. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. Members can update their email address or any other details by clicking on "Edit Profile" directly under their membership number after they have logged in to the Member's Centre. Subscribers to our free newsletter can use the Change Your Address form (under Customer Service in the menu) and fill it out. Once you've filled it in click the send button and we'll do the rest. Please remember to include your old email address so we can find it in the list as well as the new one.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
When you login to the Member's Centre you will be told how many days of membership you have left once you have 30 days left. Just click on the link to renew and your membership will just continue on, uninterrupted.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
Read our privacy policy
How Did You Get on Our List?
You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member
11. Contact Details
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
1. Cath's Corner
2. In the Tip Store - Dishwasher Savings; No Cost Hand wash; Buy Nothing and Still Have What You Need
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Corn Fritters
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - How to Build Your Stockpile Part 2
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Last Week's Question - How to clean a leather lounge without spending a fortune
8. Ask Cath
9. Join the Cheapskates Club
10. Frequently Asked Questions
11. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
We've had some glorious, much needed rain this week. The ground is soft, the water barrel is full and best of all most of it has fallen overnight, so our days have been dry, windy and even sunny - my ideal way for it to rain.
I put some buckets out on Tuesday night to catch the free water, and poured them into the rain barrel. We pay a lot for water and I'm always looking for ways to cut down our use and the cost. Catching water in buckets may seem trivial and hardly worth the fraction of a cent it saves, but every drop counts, especially in the hot summer when I use what I catch to water the garden that feeds us. Every drop we don't have to pay for is more cash freed up for us to use on something we want.
There is a saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves".
That's living the Cheapskates way. We watch the little, seemingly insignificant, expenses because they're the ones that do the most damage to our finances. A dollar here, five dollars there, 50 cents here, doesn't add up to much - once. But spend that money without thinking and without a plan often and before long those little expenses will add up to one big one.
My challenge to you this week is to stop and think before you spend that $3 on a magazine or $8 on lunch or $2 on an ice-cream, or $3.50 on a paper pack. If you really want it and you have the cash to pay for it, you may choose to buy it. But if you have the cash on you to pay for it and don't really want or need it, put it back. Walk away. Then write down (or make a note on your phone) what it was and how much you didn't spend.
Next Wednesday night, add up how much you didn't waste on little, unimportant stuff this week. Then give your Emergency Fund a boost and shift that money straight into it.
We're into week three of our birthday month and this week yearly Cheapskates Club membership is on sale for $25 for the first year until 8pm Wednesday 23rd August 2017 (new memberships only).
Have a great week everyone and enjoy your not spending.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Dishwasher Savings
For those of you, who like me find that cheap dishwasher tablets don't clean as well as the Finish Brand. Did you know you can cut the dishwasher tablets in half? This is best done with the Dishwasher Tablets which require no unwrapping and not the gel style ones. I find I get twice as many washes out of the dishwasher tablets pack for half the price and there is no difference to the quality of the wash. Also saving the environment from extra chemicals.
Contributed by Shaye Pascoe
No Cost Hand Wash
I simply put a little water into my hair shampoo bottle when I can no longer get any shampoo out, give a swirl around and put that straight into the foam hand wash bottle. Marvellous, costs nothing and I have a continuous supply of hand wash.
Contributed by Judith Barclay
Buy Nothing and Still Have What You Need
My girlfriend, who was moving house, put me onto this awesome face book page!!
It is called Buy Nothing/(then your suburb). This fb page is where locals post items they no longer want and you can be considered to get the items for FREE - yes, FREE!
You need to be over 18 years of age (believe me I definitely am!) and you need to state some streets around where you live -then you ask them if they will sign you up to be on the group fb page whereby you can start pursuing items that people around you no longer want and you can ask to be considered to get the items for FREE - no money ever exchanges hands. It's as easy as that!!
People in our area have given away toaster, bookshelves, stereo systems, trampolines, clothes, blankets, oranges, lounge suites, swing sets, brand new baby clothes......the list is endless! Just like Xmas - so exciting - I’ve now become an active fb user lol.
This face book page also enables you to ask if locals have items you may wish to borrow or have. Someone just asked for and was loaned a heater for this winter!
So the Cheapskate way!!!
Contributed by Helen Joy
There are currently more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
3. Submit your Tip
The Cheapskate's Club website is over 3,000 pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club. We publish a Winning Tip each Thursday, so enter your great money, time or energy saving idea now.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Submit your tip
4. On the Menu
Corn Fritters
When you need a quick and easy, tasty lunch or tea, corn fritters fit the bill. They pack nicely in lunchboxes, and are good hot or cold. We like them cold with salad, or warm with veggies and relish. However we have them, they're delicious and budget friendly. Don't have a tin of creamed corn? Use frozen corn kernels, just whizz about 1/2 cup before adding to the batter.
Corn Fritters
Ingredients:
1-½ cups self-raising flour
1 cup milk
1 440g tin creamed corn
1 egg, beaten
pinch salt
1 tsp mixed herbs
Oil for frying
Method:
Mix all ingredients, except oil, together until well combined. Heat oil in heavy based fry pan. Drop tablespoonfuls of mixture into oil. Cook until brown on bottom, about 2 minutes. Turn and cook other side until golden and brown. Remove from pan and drain on paper towel before serving.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Tuna mornay with rice
Tuesday: Pasta Bake
Wednesday: Vegetable curry, steamed rice, naan
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Stir-fry
Saturday: Corn Fritters & salad
In the fruit bowl: Bananas, oranges
In the cake tin: Boiled fruit cake, cup-cakes, ANZAC slice
There are over 1,500 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
How to Build Your Stockpile Part 2
Way back when I first started monthly grocery shopping and stockpiling, I realised pretty quickly that we use basically the same groceries month after month, with slight changes to the list to accommodate changes in season: the summer list is slightly different to the winter list. Otherwise I'm a very boring shopper :)
Boring it may be, but it makes it very easy to build a stockpile within my grocery budget.
Before I go shopping I always do a quick inventory of the pantry, fridge and freezer, then write my shopping list according to the gaps in the inventory.
When you start to build your stockpile, I suggest you inventory your pantry, fridge and freezer too. It will very quickly show you the gaps, what you have enough of and what you won't need to buy for another two years (or so….).
Doing the inventories will also give you a chance to tidy the pantry, clean the fridge and defrost the freezer. These three food storage areas need to be ready to start taking your stockpile as you build it.
If you need to rearrange things do; I've swapped the tea and coffee from the top shelf in the pantry to an overhead cupboard in the kitchen that just had vases (very ugly vases), odd glasses and a couple mugs in it. Those things have all been donated to the op shop. Now the cupboard holds 12 boxes of tea bags, four 500g tins of Nescafe (on sale this week for $14.99 at IGA stores), four boxes of hot chocolate pods and 24 boxes of coffee pods. And the pantry shelf is free to hold other things I use more often.
It is important to remember, as you start to stockpile, to keep things handy and like with like. If they are too hard to get to you'll forget where they are or worse still, just not bother to dig them out. And that's money down the drain, another reason to organise your food storage!
Keeping like with like just means keeping tins together, baking ingredients together, cereals together, condiments together and on.
Once you've done your inventories, you'll be able to calculate how much of each thing you need to last the length of your stockpile. At the moment, I'm aiming for 12 months of everything for my family of five.
There is a (perhaps) handy sheet you can download here (link courtesy of The Prudent Homemaker) that will tell you roughly how much of each thing you'll need per person for a year.
I'm not sure the quantities are quite accurate - according to this table I'd need to stockpile 104 kilos of pasta and 154 kilos of rice! As we eat lots of different foods, those quantities are not right for us, but they give you an idea of just how big your stockpile will need to be.
I've calculated that I will need 30 kilos of pasta - a huge difference. We eat one pasta dish a week (my boys love pasta!) and I use approximately 500g of spaghetti or noodles each time. That equates to 26 kilos a year. Adding a couple of kilos for pasta salads and casseroles brings the total for the year to 30 kilos - for the five of us. By the way, I have pasta covered - there is 37 kilos in the stockpile at the moment, enough for the next 15 months.
Twenty kilos of rice will be enough, that's what I buy each year now. Yes, we eat a lot of rice, in savoury and sweet dishes, mainly because I just like it and not just because it's cheap :)
Take a look at the sheet and see how the numbers compare to what you've estimated you'll need after doing your inventories. You might be a little surprised, like I was, or you could be completely in agreement.
How much you need to stockpile will depend on your family's size, how long you want the stockpile to last, what you eat and/or use and how much of each thing you use and/or eat and where you are going to store it.
Next week I'll share the things I'm stockpiling, the quantities I've estimated we will need for one year and where in the house it's all going to be stored.
Do you know everything you need in your stockpile? Do you know how much of each thing you use now? And how much you'd need to build your stockpile to maintenance mode?
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
Most popular forum posts this week
Buying in Season
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3625-300-A-Month-Food-Challenge-14-8-17-Buying-In-Season
Something Old Something New
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3616-Something-Old-Something-New
Where do you Grocery Shop?
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?23-Where-do-you-grocery-shop
Most popular blog posts this week
MOO Instant Custard
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2017/08/moo-instant-custard.html
No Bake Lemon Slice and our Favourite Variations
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2017/08/no-bake-lemon-slice-and-our-favourite.html
Paying too Much to Clear Your Debt
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2011/11/paying-too-much-to-clear-your-debt.html
7. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Rebecca who wrote
"I have been given a beautiful cream coloured leather lounge but I can see a few marks and dirt on it. What do I use to clean it? I feel like it needs a good scrub with a scourer but obviously that would wreck the leather. Any suggestions?
Irene Wilkinson answered
On a leather lounge just use warm water and Sunlight soap with a soft rag or sponge. Works wonders.
Kate Crawford answered
My mum has a pale yellow couch, and we treat it the same as cleaning our saddles for horse riding.
First clean the dirt off, using a gentle glycerine base soap on a damp rag, followed by a damp rag to wipe off any soapy residue. Try not to soak the leather in water as it hardens when it dries and is then more prone to cracking.
When all the gunk is washed off, follow by giving it a good feed with leather oil (usually a mineral oil with a bit of beeswax or carnauba wax added). Smear the whole surface with the oil, let it soak in for a few minutes before buffing any excess off with a clean lint free cloth.
This is also ideal for cleaning leather clothing (but not suede). If you have access to the interior side of the leather it will really drink up the oil, and keep it supple for years to come.
Suede you just brush the dirt off with a stiff brush or toothbrush...water will leave marks, so best to spray it with a sealant like scotch guard when you first get it home.
Cathy Morcom answered
I use this on all my leather:
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
10 drops of lemon or orange essential oil
Mix all ingredients well into a small bowl.
Vacuum the lounge, then ssing paper towel, work in small areas in a circular motion, GENTLY RUBBING the mixture into the leather, until you have cleaned the whole lounge. Use clean paper towel to wipe off the cleaner. If the lounge is left really shiny wipe it over again with clean paper towel.
8. Ask Cath
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
9. Join the Cheapskates Club
For just 10 cents a day you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
10. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. Members can update their email address or any other details by clicking on "Edit Profile" directly under their membership number after they have logged in to the Member's Centre. Subscribers to our free newsletter can use the Change Your Address form (under Customer Service in the menu) and fill it out. Once you've filled it in click the send button and we'll do the rest. Please remember to include your old email address so we can find it in the list as well as the new one.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
When you login to the Member's Centre you will be told how many days of membership you have left once you have 30 days left. Just click on the link to renew and your membership will just continue on, uninterrupted.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
Read our privacy policy
How Did You Get on Our List?
You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member
11. Contact Details
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!