£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Honeysucklelou2

Scrabble cookie cutters sound intriguing! Have a good day today...I always find the last day of half term:( as I love being able to be at home with my children.

Treadingonplaymobil

On laundry and cleaning

As part of my drive to match our budgets with our eco-concerns, I've been looking at our general household cleaning supplies. I made a quick list of the things we bring into the house:
- Surface cleaner spray (bathroom and kitchen)
- toilet cleaner
- bleach (super eco friendly...)
- washing up liquid
- laundry powder
- delicates washing liquid
- stain remover (vanish type stuff)
- carpet cleaner (rarely used, but we have 3 children so use the odd bit for spills)
- cream cleaner for hob and stubborn marks

I researched a few options, including splosh, ecover refills etc for each, and here's my conclusions, for anyone who's interested.

Surface cleaner spray
Used to buy Method, as it was the only brand that didn't set off allergies for me, but have recently converted to vinegar with essential oils in it, and am seeing no problems so far. Ecover, splosh etc all far more expensive, so sensible to stick with vinegar. And no one in the family has yet complained about the smell .

Toilet cleaner
I've just been using Aldi/Lidl's bog (ha) standard toilet cleaner for the last year or two, as it was so much cheaper than Ecover. For some reason I have about four bottles under the sink, so will use this up before trying anything else, but have come across lots of bicarb/vinegar homemade solutions for toilet cleaning which get really good reviews, so will give that a go once I run out of the chemically junk. Again, assuming that works well, it will be far cheaper than Splosh/Ecover options. If the homemade options are terrible I will revisit this, but I'll wait until the chemicals are used up first.

Bleach
I am a bad environmentalist. I use bleach. Not a lot - only really for bleaching the inside of tea cups occasionally and also for bleaching dish cloths - we have had the same dozen or so washable cloths on the go for about two years now, and I figure the odd bit of bleach offsets the environmental price of buying new ones (where the fabric is surely bleached during production). I just cannot cope when they get all brown and sad looking if I never bleach them, even though I know they've been hot washed and are hygienic. I am reducing the amount I use for cloths from a big squirt to a drop though, and am down to my last mug that needs occasional bleaching (and won't replace it when it eventually inevitably gets broken). One bottle of bleach lasts around 3 months here, I'm going to attempt to extend that to six months or more. The cloths themselves, incidentally, are manmade fibres, but it seems mad to chuck them to replace with more eco friendly options unless they are actually dead (otherwise, not terribly eco friendly), and they've got plenty of life in them still.

Washing up liquid
We have always used Ecover washing up liquid. I did look carefully into using Splosh as I love the idea, but the price is just too much more than Ecover - I usually buy it on offer at £2 a bottle, and by my calculations the Splosh washing up liquid works out at twice that, assuming a similar amount is needed. We have a local shop that does refills for Ecover, which I'm going to investigate, as I love the Splosh ethos of not using a whole new bottle each time.

Laundry powder
I tried, really I did, but there is just no eco option that can come anywhere even slightly close to Aldi/Lidl's own laundry powder in price terms - they are all at least double the price. And we use quite a lot of laundry powder, as we do a wash pretty much every day. So eco guilt but budget sanity here. When we're richer we'll swap to eco options.

Delicates washing liquid
This is used a lot less often, and a bottle lasts ages, so I don't mind if I spend a bit more on this (although I usually get woolite or sainsburys own). I think I will try sal's suds for this and see how it works.

Stain remover
I have two tubs of Aldi's own brand of vanish type stuff to use up, but will investigate less chemically options when this is all gone. I was trying to get paint out of cashmere the other day and just rubbed it with soap, which worked perfectly well for that particular mark.

Carpet cleaner
Not regularly used, but for occasional spills. Our carpet is awful but stands up to a lot, so i will just swap carpet shampoo for sal's suds too. I am hugely allergic to any 'proper' carpet shampoo I have tried - puffy itchy face and unable to go in the room for two days afterwards. Always fun.

Cream cleaner
Again, not used often, and we've had a bottle on the go for months. Only really use it for the hob. Will try some bicarb/vinegar combination when the cream cleaner runs out, as it's really the abrasive action I keep it for.

Hand wash
Another one where we've been using Method handwash for years. I don't like the amount of plastic we're chucking into the recycling though, so again was looking into the splosh thing, but actually have decided that we're going to try good old fashioned bars of soap for a while, and if that's a disaster with slimy soaps etc, we'll revisit it.

So all in all, we're not making any dramatic changes on the cleaner front, apart from shifting over to more homemade alternatives as we use up what we have and trying to be thoughtful about the times we do use things like bleach.

Not quite as exciting as the toilet roll chat (wow, even less exciting than toilet roll. A new low), but I thought it might help someone who's wrestling with the same budget/eco balance.

arsenalbarnie

I find for my hob just squirt w up liquid around then squeeze warm water over hob and leave it to soak for ten mins and it will wipe off.

Suffolk_lass

Re washing up liquid, a tip is to decant a third out of your new bottle into the old one and top up the new bottle with water and put it back in your stores. Then it will thicken up again by the time you come to use it. I don't make it any less concentrated or it is too runny.

I also use about a third less laundry detergent if it is not in blocks. And finally I stick the cloths in the washing machine on the hottest wash with just a dash of bleach because the engineer told me a hot wash once in a while stops it getting "furred up" inside with soap scum, extending the life of your washing machine.

I also use borax, if you can get it, proper old-fashioned stuff for a variety of stain removal things, and pears soap. Marvellous stuff

Working_Mum

I am a big "decanter-er" of cleaning products - I buy big for washing up liquid and use a gorgeous glass bottle with an olive oil type pourer in the top and it looks smashing by the side of my sink and is MSE!! I buy the Bio-D environmentally friendly range in bulk and store it - admittedly I saved a pot of pennies to budget for these items after using my cleaning product hoard!

Last year I found loads of bars of soap so have been using these for a while - found an old soap dish in a cupboard and the soap doesn't go all gunky.

I also tend to use 2/3 of the recommended amount of any laundry product and clothes clean just fine. If I need to pay special attention to certain areas (like collars etc) I just get my nail brush and soap out!

I am in the final throes of using my last bottle of Vim (old style!!) which I have had for about 5 years but is essential on some stubborn stains - bicarb does the same job I have found.

Love using borax for sinks and loo's and finally a bottle of cheap cola will clean the porcelain of a loo if left overnight!!

Happy MSE-ing everyone,

WM

Suffolk_lass

I had completely forgotten about cheap cola. Best place for it too imho

[Deleted User]

Hi TOPM for washing powder have you considered eco eggs? I use https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecozone-Ecoballs-240-wash-balls/dp/B00152TVWU

I still use ecover powder for towels, whites and bedsheets, but they work fine for most clothes!
Thank you for all the information on your eco journey. I think it is important to learn how we can do the best for ourselves and our planet and still stick to a reasonable budget! Your tips will help me and others so please keep your musings coming!
Also dont forget with splosh that price is for 3 to 4 bottles worth of stuff - the washing up liquid comes as a pack that you dilute a third into a normal washing up bottle so you get 3 bottles for that price. Again feel free to ignore me if youve thought of this, I appriciate the extra cost with the volume of washing up/clothes washing you do! In the future I hope to make a switch to completly natural cleaners like vinegar so will be interested to see how you get on.
When your cloths do need to be replaced I have found tk maxx/ homesense to be a good place to buy eco friendly clothes at a good price
x!!!

museumworker

Just caught up after a busy work period has kept me off MSE. Well done on your one year anniversary, and on not only stopping the debt from mounting but also reducing it by £4K.

I'd forgotten about the 10 month council tax so have just worked out that our flat battery + call out last weekend which cost us £150 is mostly covered by the council tax money I'd set aside.

Could you let me know the name of the slow podcast you were listening to, sounds really interesting.

MatyMoo

I have a Polti Steam cleaner and hardly need to use any cleaning products at all! Just my lovely Polti and some kitchen roll but I'm sur you could use cloths instead.

It is also great for defrosting the freezer!

Treadingonplaymobil

Well who knew posting about cleaning could raise so much discussion? Loving all the chat, lots of good tips for frugal and eco results.

Well I have had a mega MSE day today. It didn't start promisingly - I had to pop to the corner shop for houmous and crisps for playdate, as we just had nothing that I could reasonably feed a gaggle of 3-9yos with. But I didn't want to trash my food budget so I scraped together enough change from around the house to cover it. Win.

But I did make pitta bread and MSE hobnobs for the children (and two mums) who came over, which was pretty darn cheap. Another win.

AND THEN I finally got paid for next week's work! So I was able to fill my business account three month buffer :T :T :T , make a £40 debt overpayment :T :T :T , and put another £40 towards the car service next week :T :T :T , so I have £88 in the car service pot plus another £52 in the emergency fund (car cutting out on the dual carriageway is an emergency in my world) ready to go towards it. I suspect the car will cost more than that, so there will be some frantic robbing peter to pay paul when that bill comes in, but I'll worry about that next week. The exciting bit is that the overpayment brought the barclaycard balance under the £12,000 barrier - it now stands at £11,958.15. Exciting times! Honestly, it's just rejuvenated me so much to get past another (tiny) milestone on this journey. Now I'm trying to figure out how quickly I can wiggle that number down below £11,900. Will wait until the car is serviced before I get ahead of myself though.

Finished off the day by making dinner from leftover veggie burgers (which were cheap enough when I first made them, so getting a second meal out of the batch was a total win), leftover pittas from lunch and a few frozen veggies. I'll be over here polishing my MSE halo if you need me :A .

Three things to do today
1. Make pitta bread. Done.
2. Make hobnobs and/or scrabble biscuits. Done.
3. Get sourdough going - need to make another batch before my mum shows up on Sunday as she always nabs a couple of loaves from the freezer! Won't have time to bake any next week. Didn't do this, ran out of time before playdate and forgot afterwards. Have fed the starter again to make it tomorrow.

Savings/Spends:
- £0 2nd half of February 'rounding down' overpayment pot.
- £1,215.35/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.