Lots more Sneaky Ways to save the pennies

It has taken me more than six months but I have finally read both Sneaky Ways threads from start to finish. I decided in Februaryl that I would read at least a page a day. The Pages document I’ve created to save all my favourite tips is over 33 pages long. (Pages is Apple’s word processor. Free on my iPad.)

I also found the first tip I ever posted, below, on 6th July 2012. It was in response to a post concerning my frugal “bible”, aka The Tightwad Gazette. I’m really surprised that it took until April this year before I posted again.

PipneyJane wrote: »

Yes, me too.

Which brings me to the tip I wanted to share. I use Douwe Egbert coffee jars to store my spices. ( The 200g jars hold about 500g of ground spice.) To label the jars, I was inspired by the tip Amy gives about sticking a dinosaur picture onto her son's lunch box. I used MS Word to print up some nice labels, then stuck them on clean jars and covered them with clear contact paper for a waterproof finish. (Note: they don't go in a dishwasher.) Fancy, matching jars for virtually nothing extra (I buy them on offer).

To get the glue off from the jars' original labels, apply WD40.

How can I summarise over 10 years of tips? The early ones were all about watering things down: milk, shampoo, hand wash, washing liquid, washing up liquid, hair conditioner, body lotion... I’ve tried most of them and I can confirm that watering body lotion or hand cream does not work. It’s the mixing-oil-and-water-problem, with the body lotion sitting in suspended drops throughout the water, so you couldn’t even pour it off. It was Cien Body Lotion, which is quite thick. This was an experiment I started in March after someone on the earlier thread suggested it. In an attempt to rescue it, I added Mr T’s value baby lotion (25p for 500ml), which helped, but the water means it does not dry off in the same way as “normal” body lotion. At two pumps a day (one for each leg), I’ve nearly finished the recycled-Value-hand-soap-bottle-ful and won’t be watering it again. When I top up the bottle again, I’ll use 25% Cien to 75% baby lotion and see how that goes.

Reusing Value handsoap bottles is probably my most visible money saving tip. I use them for hand soap (Value foam bath which I scent with lemon verbena or eucalyptus essential oils), shampoo (watered if it is too gluggy), body lotion, body wash, hair conditioner (always watered since I realised the only physical difference between value conditioner and the more expensive was the value was thinner so if I watered the more expensive, it’d work out cheaper than the value), and washing up liquid (diluted with vinegar to combat the effects of our horrendously hard water).

As mentioned in April, I used to travel a lot for work, colllecting all the small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion. When I run out of something, I’ll use the hotel samples to top up the relevant pump action bottle. Also, I dye my hair and find that the bottle of hair conditioner supplied will easily last 3 or 3 hair dye sessions, so I save up the hair conditioner and use that (watered down) to refill my hair conditioner pump action bottle.

My final tip for today is that I use a permanent marker (sharpie pen) to date when I open a bottle of shampoo/conditioner/body wash/body lotion, if it’s been watered (hair conditioner) and how long the last bottle lasted. It helps me work out when I need to buy refills.