Your Cheapskates Club Newsletter 45:17
In this Newsletter
1. Cath's Corner
2. In the Tip Store - The Christmas Present Pool; MOO Butter Soft; Using the In-Between Sheets
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Wellington Loaf
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge with - Where I Store Everything for Once-a-Month Shopping
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Member's Featured Blog - November Savings Revolution 2017
8. Last Week's Question - Help this bloke with his laundry dilemma
9. Ask Cath
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
Sometimes I get emails that just make me smile, this is one of them.
"Dear Cath,
I'm a housewife and a Mom of two. My husband works full time. We used to live on a month to month pay check and bought whatever fancy when went for shopping.
I never knew much about budgeting, menu planning, stockpiling, savings, etc. until I learned them from you, Wendy and all the other ladies at Cheapskates Club. I had signed up to your free newsletter in 2011 with my other email address, most probably after reading your books from public library. But I never had gone through them much until April this year. After coming from 2-1/2 months overseas holidays, in April this year, my and my husband's both bank accounts were empty for a week, leaving just $20 made up of coins in a till, until that month's pay day. My husband requested an overdraft and got it to pay that week's rent. My husband's credit card was full. We were paying a personal loan that we had taken to go on holidays and a car loan. When I was checking my emails, your newsletter caught my eyes. Then I went through more than half of your newsletters that I was receiving from 2011. I signed up for the menu planning course and Saving Revolution too; this week I received my 25th lesson from the Savings Revolution. And I put most of your ideas to action: stock piling, menu planning, budgeting, saving in separate accounts (PoM & emergency fund), gardening our own vegetables, etc.
Just few months after I started to practice your brilliant ideas, today: we have paid off our credit card and personal loan fully (debt free except car loan), our kitchen and other shelves are full of groceries we need for few months, both of our bank accounts have money, more than we needed, and we also have an emergency fund and a POM account. We don't live from paycheque to paycheque anymore.
I just want to thank you, Wendy and all the other ladies at Cheapskates Club from the bottom of my heart. Without your ideas I cannot imagine what I would have been feeding my family/where would we live. I feel blessed to be a member of the Cheapskates Club. There's so much more for me to learn from you all. My happiness keeps growing these days, the same as my small veggie patch.
God Bless You!
- Melani"
If you have been hesitating, wondering if joining the Cheapskates Club is worth it, try it. You have nothing to lose. Right now the Tip Store has over 12, 000 tips in it, the Recipe File has over 1,600 recipes and is growing daily, there are almost 200 Tip Sheets for you to use, the meal plan archive goes back to 2006 (very handy if you struggle to get dinner on the table and in budget). The $300 a Month Food Challenge is as active as ever. The Saving Revolution is ready for you. And of course the Member's Forum is full of wonderful, helpful Cheapskaters who have all been new to the Cheapskates Club, who are waiting and willing to help, advise and encourage. You can join here for immediate access to the Member's Centre.
Have a lovely week everyone.
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
The Christmas Present Pool
Approximate $ Savings: Up to $1,000.00
I belong to a large family and for many years many of us were broke at Christmas buying presents for each other. About 10 years ago, we decided to change the system between us for Christmas, instead of buying each other a gift we agreed to put that money towards buying them a good birthday present. Each of us would then contribute $50.00 in a pool and Christmas presents would be bought only for children (18 or younger) and grandparents, since they were the groups that really enjoyed Christmas. Given we had 5 children in our pool of kids to buy for and 2 grandparents, we ended up having about $100-$150.00 to spend on each, so they received a good present, and when each child went out of the pool, the money went up to $200-$250.00 per child. This meant that each child received a really good present from everyone (instead of a lot of cheap rubbish), and each adult in the scheme received a good birthday present at the relevant time. A win-win for everyone, since Christmas presents cost no person more than $50.00 per year for everyone.
Contributed by Debra
MOO Butter Soft
Approximate $ Savings: $2-3 per week
We used to use a tub of spreadable butter a week and I resented paying $4.50 - $5.50 per 500g, and also did not like the idea of ingesting canola oil in the spreadable butter. My husband got sulky when I would only buy real butter $2.90 per 500g, and once I started making everyone's lunch every day I started to understand, hard butter is no fun on bread, especially in winter. So after reading the contents of the Devondale pack was 27% oil, I thought I would make my own.
After some trial and error, here is my recipe:
Cut a 250g piece of butter in half lengthwise to allow it to heat evenly without too much fuss. Also its easier to get a sense of how much to heat it with 250g rather than 500g.
Put it in a glass jug or ceramic bowl. Microwave for 30 secs at a time, you want butter just soft, not melted too much. Too much heat and it will separate - if it does just use it a moist banana cake or to fry with.
Once you can mix the butter with a fork, add your choice of 20-25% olive oil. Stir through.
Pour into a container and it will solidify as it cools.
Then use it! Saves $2 a week or more in a bigger family and one less item to buy. A 25% mix will stay spreadable in Melbourne cooler weather. As the weather warms, so does the butter so problem solved! I usually have a few blocks of butter in the freezer, if you do too, bring it to room temperature first, as too easy to overheat the edges and separate the butter.
Contributed by Sam Etheridge
Using the In-Between Sheets
When using puff pastry, I save all the blue sheets in between the sheets of pastry. I keep them in the freezer in a freezer bag, saves me buying the rolls of in between sheets, to use when packing meat, pastries that I make, bacon, its much easier to pull things out of freezer, things are not stuck together.
Contributed by Glad Power
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
Wellington Loaf
This is a meatless dish that we just love. It gives us that roast dinner feeling without the roast - just right for when the meat budget is tight and the family is desperate for a roast dinner. I serve it with the usual baked veggies: potato, sweet potato, carrot and onion and steamed greens and of course lashings of gravy. Yum!
Wellington Loaf
Ingredient:
1 sheet puff pastry
1 tin Sanitarium Tender Pieces, minced
100g mushrooms, wiped and finely sliced
1 onion, finely diced
30g butter
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 beaten egg
Method:
Cook the mushrooms, onion and tomato paste in the butter until the mushrooms and onions are soft. Spread the mushroom mixture on one half of the sheet of pastry. Cover evenly with the Casserole Mince. Carefully roll the pastry over, sealing firmly on the edges. Brush with the beaten egg. Bake in a hot oven for 20 – 25 minutes until the pastry is cooked, golden and puffy.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Wellington Loaf, scalloped potato, greens
Tuesday: Mushroom & Parmesan Risotto
Wednesday: Satay Chicken
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Stir-fry
Saturday: Homemade Subs
In the fruit bowl: bananas, apples, pears
In the cake tin: Blueberry Muffins, Choc Mint Slice
There are over 1,600 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Where I Store Everything for Once-a-Month Shopping
People look at me like I'm a mad woman when I tell them I shop once a month and I have been asked over and over where I store it all. I can tell you that a month’s worth of food isn't really that much.
Because I shop once a month and have a stockpile of groceries, most grocery items are kept in the kitchen pantry or on the store shelves in the laundry until they are needed in the kitchen. In the pantry I keep the things we use every day – cereals, spreads, baking supplies, oil and so on.
Bread goes into the little freezer over the fridge so it doesn't get squashed and bent out of shape. I keep pastry sheets, spices and stock cubes in there too.
The door of the fridge holds four bottles of milk, plus cream, sour cream and salad dressings.
The top shelf holds three Tupperware containers: one for beetroot, one for pineapple slices and one for pickled onions. I keep jams, mustards and pickles on the top shelf too.
Eggs go on the second shelf of the fridge as do containers of sliced meat for lunches and leftovers.
Butter and cheeses are on the third shelf in a container. The third shelf also has Tupperware containers holding fruit and vegetables, as do the crispers in the bottom.
Meat is packaged up in meal sizes and double wrapped in freezer bags or vacuum sealed and then stored in the chest freezer. Frozen vegetables are kept in the basket in the chest freezer, along with a spare bottle of milk.
In my kitchen dry goods are put into the freezer, in the packaging, as soon as they enter the house. I do this to kill any weevils that may be in the foods. Once they come out of the freezer (after at least seven days, usually longer if I don't need them in a hurry) they are either stacked in the store cupboard or used to top up a canister in the pantry.
I prefer to decant everything into labelled canisters, rather than keep open packets on the pantry shelf. Open packets are an invitation to bugs to have a party – at my cost. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on canisters. Coffee jars or formula tins are a uniform size and stack neatly and best of all because they are recycled they are free. Ask friends and relatives to keep them for you to build your supply quickly. When a canister is empty, it is washed and dried and refilled from the stockpile and I make a note on the appropriate inventory, ready for making up my shopping list.
Storing a month's worth of groceries isn't difficult. My kitchen isn't huge. In fact it is quite small. I don't have an abundance of cupboard space, I just use what I do have to its full advantage.
With a little creative thinking you can easily find room in your home for your once-a-month grocery shop.
Putting it all away is the hardest part of the whole exercise, but it only takes about half an hour. Everything fits in. And I don’t have to unpack groceries for another four weeks.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
Most popular forum posts this week
"Spending" Flybuys Points
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3174-quot-Spending-quot-flybuys-points.
Young Adult School Leavers, At Uni, Working and Living at Home
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?2955-DISCUSSION-Young-Adult-School-Leavers-At-Uni-Working-and-living-At-home
Budgeting for Casual Work
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?800-Budgeting-for-casual-work
Most popular blog posts this week
How One Person with a Small Voice can Change the World
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2013/11/how-one-person-with-small-voice-can.html
One is Enough
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2014/01/one-is-enough.html
How Long Could You Survive?
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2013/12/how-long-could-you-survive.html
7. Members Featured Blog
Platinum Cheapskates Club members have their very own Cheapskating blogs, and they are wonderful and inspirational and encouraging and even funny. This week's featured blog is written by hevva.
November Savings Revolution 2017
G'day everybody...this year is galloping on towards Christmas and a New Year.
This year has been stressful & busy but interesting and amazing:
We dealt with my MIL moving to residential care and the many changes to her physical and mental status since then
We sold our house and moved into hers and have spent many months and heartaches combining households, discarding, decluttering, clearing and making that house liveable for us.
We changed cars, and I don't think we could have ever accomplished the move without the old 4WD. She was a champion. The new one is wonderful and a bargain and very economical (diesel vs gas/petrol).
We had several months of injury and illness that was a terrific challenge.
We had a real holiday, which was budgeted for and incredibly reasonable and was a restorative for both of us.
I made my lifetime bucket list.
I am blessed and lucky and I love the encouragement, support, ideas and inspiration that this community has given me.
Thank you all.
Login to read more Cheapskates Club Member blogs
8. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Bill who wrote
"I have just bought my first front loader and going through the pains of MOOing stuff to wash the clothes. It all gets a bit confusing , and remember I am only a bloke, so if anybody has a sure-fire way of doing the washing easily and cheaply, please let me know."
Lisa Docherty answered
Whichever detergent you use, use less than the amount recommended. The manufacturers love to sell product, but it builds up in your machine and your clothes when you use too much. I use a liquid and only use about a tablespoon full per wash. If things are stained I treat or soak first. My favourite stain remover is dish washing liquid. You rub it into the stain very well, then put the item in the wash. It is especially good at removing greasy or oily stains.
Michelle Ferey answered
I MOO the Cheapskates Washing Powder, have done for a few years for my front loader. Easy, make a batch that uses up the full packet of Lectric Soda, in the correct ratio, should last almost one year. I blitz in food processor to blend and even. I also use diluted vinegar for towels and sheets. It must be easy, my children use it. Miss 17 is off to Uni next year and has written instructions on top of the washer for Mr 13.
Sue Burns answered
I don't MOO but I do buy the Aldi washing powder, excellent and I pad it out with 1 cup washing powder to 1/2 cup bi carb soda. I don't use fabric softener, I only use the cheap lavender disinfectant from Coles as a rinse aid. If things are really dirty I add 1/2 cup white vinegar to the above. I also wash whites together, darks together etc. Towels are washed separately too. If you have enough clothes, wait until you have a full load!!
Ann-Kristin Skogstad answered
I tried to make my own but felt it never got as clean as I wanted. I use the Aldi Trimat laundry detergent, but use only a quarter of what it says. Never had a problem and I use vinegar as fabric softener. if you don’t like the smell of vinegar use a drop of two of essential oil (I find it’s very cheap at Chemist Warehouse or online).
Do you have a question that needs an answer?
Send us your question and receive the combined knowledge of your fellow Cheapskates to solve your problem!
Ask Your Question
9. 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
10. 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!
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12. 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 - The Christmas Present Pool; MOO Butter Soft; Using the In-Between Sheets
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Wellington Loaf
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge with - Where I Store Everything for Once-a-Month Shopping
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Member's Featured Blog - November Savings Revolution 2017
8. Last Week's Question - Help this bloke with his laundry dilemma
9. Ask Cath
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
Sometimes I get emails that just make me smile, this is one of them.
"Dear Cath,
I'm a housewife and a Mom of two. My husband works full time. We used to live on a month to month pay check and bought whatever fancy when went for shopping.
I never knew much about budgeting, menu planning, stockpiling, savings, etc. until I learned them from you, Wendy and all the other ladies at Cheapskates Club. I had signed up to your free newsletter in 2011 with my other email address, most probably after reading your books from public library. But I never had gone through them much until April this year. After coming from 2-1/2 months overseas holidays, in April this year, my and my husband's both bank accounts were empty for a week, leaving just $20 made up of coins in a till, until that month's pay day. My husband requested an overdraft and got it to pay that week's rent. My husband's credit card was full. We were paying a personal loan that we had taken to go on holidays and a car loan. When I was checking my emails, your newsletter caught my eyes. Then I went through more than half of your newsletters that I was receiving from 2011. I signed up for the menu planning course and Saving Revolution too; this week I received my 25th lesson from the Savings Revolution. And I put most of your ideas to action: stock piling, menu planning, budgeting, saving in separate accounts (PoM & emergency fund), gardening our own vegetables, etc.
Just few months after I started to practice your brilliant ideas, today: we have paid off our credit card and personal loan fully (debt free except car loan), our kitchen and other shelves are full of groceries we need for few months, both of our bank accounts have money, more than we needed, and we also have an emergency fund and a POM account. We don't live from paycheque to paycheque anymore.
I just want to thank you, Wendy and all the other ladies at Cheapskates Club from the bottom of my heart. Without your ideas I cannot imagine what I would have been feeding my family/where would we live. I feel blessed to be a member of the Cheapskates Club. There's so much more for me to learn from you all. My happiness keeps growing these days, the same as my small veggie patch.
God Bless You!
- Melani"
If you have been hesitating, wondering if joining the Cheapskates Club is worth it, try it. You have nothing to lose. Right now the Tip Store has over 12, 000 tips in it, the Recipe File has over 1,600 recipes and is growing daily, there are almost 200 Tip Sheets for you to use, the meal plan archive goes back to 2006 (very handy if you struggle to get dinner on the table and in budget). The $300 a Month Food Challenge is as active as ever. The Saving Revolution is ready for you. And of course the Member's Forum is full of wonderful, helpful Cheapskaters who have all been new to the Cheapskates Club, who are waiting and willing to help, advise and encourage. You can join here for immediate access to the Member's Centre.
Have a lovely week everyone.
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
The Christmas Present Pool
Approximate $ Savings: Up to $1,000.00
I belong to a large family and for many years many of us were broke at Christmas buying presents for each other. About 10 years ago, we decided to change the system between us for Christmas, instead of buying each other a gift we agreed to put that money towards buying them a good birthday present. Each of us would then contribute $50.00 in a pool and Christmas presents would be bought only for children (18 or younger) and grandparents, since they were the groups that really enjoyed Christmas. Given we had 5 children in our pool of kids to buy for and 2 grandparents, we ended up having about $100-$150.00 to spend on each, so they received a good present, and when each child went out of the pool, the money went up to $200-$250.00 per child. This meant that each child received a really good present from everyone (instead of a lot of cheap rubbish), and each adult in the scheme received a good birthday present at the relevant time. A win-win for everyone, since Christmas presents cost no person more than $50.00 per year for everyone.
Contributed by Debra
MOO Butter Soft
Approximate $ Savings: $2-3 per week
We used to use a tub of spreadable butter a week and I resented paying $4.50 - $5.50 per 500g, and also did not like the idea of ingesting canola oil in the spreadable butter. My husband got sulky when I would only buy real butter $2.90 per 500g, and once I started making everyone's lunch every day I started to understand, hard butter is no fun on bread, especially in winter. So after reading the contents of the Devondale pack was 27% oil, I thought I would make my own.
After some trial and error, here is my recipe:
Cut a 250g piece of butter in half lengthwise to allow it to heat evenly without too much fuss. Also its easier to get a sense of how much to heat it with 250g rather than 500g.
Put it in a glass jug or ceramic bowl. Microwave for 30 secs at a time, you want butter just soft, not melted too much. Too much heat and it will separate - if it does just use it a moist banana cake or to fry with.
Once you can mix the butter with a fork, add your choice of 20-25% olive oil. Stir through.
Pour into a container and it will solidify as it cools.
Then use it! Saves $2 a week or more in a bigger family and one less item to buy. A 25% mix will stay spreadable in Melbourne cooler weather. As the weather warms, so does the butter so problem solved! I usually have a few blocks of butter in the freezer, if you do too, bring it to room temperature first, as too easy to overheat the edges and separate the butter.
Contributed by Sam Etheridge
Using the In-Between Sheets
When using puff pastry, I save all the blue sheets in between the sheets of pastry. I keep them in the freezer in a freezer bag, saves me buying the rolls of in between sheets, to use when packing meat, pastries that I make, bacon, its much easier to pull things out of freezer, things are not stuck together.
Contributed by Glad Power
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
Wellington Loaf
This is a meatless dish that we just love. It gives us that roast dinner feeling without the roast - just right for when the meat budget is tight and the family is desperate for a roast dinner. I serve it with the usual baked veggies: potato, sweet potato, carrot and onion and steamed greens and of course lashings of gravy. Yum!
Wellington Loaf
Ingredient:
1 sheet puff pastry
1 tin Sanitarium Tender Pieces, minced
100g mushrooms, wiped and finely sliced
1 onion, finely diced
30g butter
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 beaten egg
Method:
Cook the mushrooms, onion and tomato paste in the butter until the mushrooms and onions are soft. Spread the mushroom mixture on one half of the sheet of pastry. Cover evenly with the Casserole Mince. Carefully roll the pastry over, sealing firmly on the edges. Brush with the beaten egg. Bake in a hot oven for 20 – 25 minutes until the pastry is cooked, golden and puffy.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Wellington Loaf, scalloped potato, greens
Tuesday: Mushroom & Parmesan Risotto
Wednesday: Satay Chicken
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Stir-fry
Saturday: Homemade Subs
In the fruit bowl: bananas, apples, pears
In the cake tin: Blueberry Muffins, Choc Mint Slice
There are over 1,600 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Where I Store Everything for Once-a-Month Shopping
People look at me like I'm a mad woman when I tell them I shop once a month and I have been asked over and over where I store it all. I can tell you that a month’s worth of food isn't really that much.
Because I shop once a month and have a stockpile of groceries, most grocery items are kept in the kitchen pantry or on the store shelves in the laundry until they are needed in the kitchen. In the pantry I keep the things we use every day – cereals, spreads, baking supplies, oil and so on.
Bread goes into the little freezer over the fridge so it doesn't get squashed and bent out of shape. I keep pastry sheets, spices and stock cubes in there too.
The door of the fridge holds four bottles of milk, plus cream, sour cream and salad dressings.
The top shelf holds three Tupperware containers: one for beetroot, one for pineapple slices and one for pickled onions. I keep jams, mustards and pickles on the top shelf too.
Eggs go on the second shelf of the fridge as do containers of sliced meat for lunches and leftovers.
Butter and cheeses are on the third shelf in a container. The third shelf also has Tupperware containers holding fruit and vegetables, as do the crispers in the bottom.
Meat is packaged up in meal sizes and double wrapped in freezer bags or vacuum sealed and then stored in the chest freezer. Frozen vegetables are kept in the basket in the chest freezer, along with a spare bottle of milk.
In my kitchen dry goods are put into the freezer, in the packaging, as soon as they enter the house. I do this to kill any weevils that may be in the foods. Once they come out of the freezer (after at least seven days, usually longer if I don't need them in a hurry) they are either stacked in the store cupboard or used to top up a canister in the pantry.
I prefer to decant everything into labelled canisters, rather than keep open packets on the pantry shelf. Open packets are an invitation to bugs to have a party – at my cost. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on canisters. Coffee jars or formula tins are a uniform size and stack neatly and best of all because they are recycled they are free. Ask friends and relatives to keep them for you to build your supply quickly. When a canister is empty, it is washed and dried and refilled from the stockpile and I make a note on the appropriate inventory, ready for making up my shopping list.
Storing a month's worth of groceries isn't difficult. My kitchen isn't huge. In fact it is quite small. I don't have an abundance of cupboard space, I just use what I do have to its full advantage.
With a little creative thinking you can easily find room in your home for your once-a-month grocery shop.
Putting it all away is the hardest part of the whole exercise, but it only takes about half an hour. Everything fits in. And I don’t have to unpack groceries for another four weeks.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
Most popular forum posts this week
"Spending" Flybuys Points
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?3174-quot-Spending-quot-flybuys-points.
Young Adult School Leavers, At Uni, Working and Living at Home
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?2955-DISCUSSION-Young-Adult-School-Leavers-At-Uni-Working-and-living-At-home
Budgeting for Casual Work
http://www.cheapskatesclub.com.au/memberforum/showthread.php?800-Budgeting-for-casual-work
Most popular blog posts this week
How One Person with a Small Voice can Change the World
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2013/11/how-one-person-with-small-voice-can.html
One is Enough
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2014/01/one-is-enough.html
How Long Could You Survive?
http://www.debtfreecashedupandlaughing.com.au/2013/12/how-long-could-you-survive.html
7. Members Featured Blog
Platinum Cheapskates Club members have their very own Cheapskating blogs, and they are wonderful and inspirational and encouraging and even funny. This week's featured blog is written by hevva.
November Savings Revolution 2017
G'day everybody...this year is galloping on towards Christmas and a New Year.
This year has been stressful & busy but interesting and amazing:
We dealt with my MIL moving to residential care and the many changes to her physical and mental status since then
We sold our house and moved into hers and have spent many months and heartaches combining households, discarding, decluttering, clearing and making that house liveable for us.
We changed cars, and I don't think we could have ever accomplished the move without the old 4WD. She was a champion. The new one is wonderful and a bargain and very economical (diesel vs gas/petrol).
We had several months of injury and illness that was a terrific challenge.
We had a real holiday, which was budgeted for and incredibly reasonable and was a restorative for both of us.
I made my lifetime bucket list.
I am blessed and lucky and I love the encouragement, support, ideas and inspiration that this community has given me.
Thank you all.
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8. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Bill who wrote
"I have just bought my first front loader and going through the pains of MOOing stuff to wash the clothes. It all gets a bit confusing , and remember I am only a bloke, so if anybody has a sure-fire way of doing the washing easily and cheaply, please let me know."
Lisa Docherty answered
Whichever detergent you use, use less than the amount recommended. The manufacturers love to sell product, but it builds up in your machine and your clothes when you use too much. I use a liquid and only use about a tablespoon full per wash. If things are stained I treat or soak first. My favourite stain remover is dish washing liquid. You rub it into the stain very well, then put the item in the wash. It is especially good at removing greasy or oily stains.
Michelle Ferey answered
I MOO the Cheapskates Washing Powder, have done for a few years for my front loader. Easy, make a batch that uses up the full packet of Lectric Soda, in the correct ratio, should last almost one year. I blitz in food processor to blend and even. I also use diluted vinegar for towels and sheets. It must be easy, my children use it. Miss 17 is off to Uni next year and has written instructions on top of the washer for Mr 13.
Sue Burns answered
I don't MOO but I do buy the Aldi washing powder, excellent and I pad it out with 1 cup washing powder to 1/2 cup bi carb soda. I don't use fabric softener, I only use the cheap lavender disinfectant from Coles as a rinse aid. If things are really dirty I add 1/2 cup white vinegar to the above. I also wash whites together, darks together etc. Towels are washed separately too. If you have enough clothes, wait until you have a full load!!
Ann-Kristin Skogstad answered
I tried to make my own but felt it never got as clean as I wanted. I use the Aldi Trimat laundry detergent, but use only a quarter of what it says. Never had a problem and I use vinegar as fabric softener. if you don’t like the smell of vinegar use a drop of two of essential oil (I find it’s very cheap at Chemist Warehouse or online).
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