Great 'Make it last longer' Hunt

cadalot

:hello:

If your paint brush does go hard, trim the bristles and use it for cleaning tricky parts of your cooker or bar-b-q.

Baking soda can eliminate bad odours use it instead of gimmicky, expensive air fresheners: leave an open box of it in your bathroom or inside old socks placed in your shoes. Keep out of reach of small children though!

Stale bread makes a good eraser of dirty marks on walls, just squeeze it into a ball and rub!!

Olliebeak

My favourite one has to be to get into the habit of using the soap powder/liquid devices that I got as freebies via the 'freebie board' on here. I am just so impressed with how much longer my box of soap powder is now lasting me. I must have been seriously over-using as I was getting through one and half of the biggest size boxes each month - now I'm only buying one box on alternate months. There is only myself and OH in this house but I do laundry for his 2 elderly male relatives and occasionally my daughter/son.

Most of the other ideas on here, I am already using but it was good to have a reminder of some of the ones that I had 'accidentally' stopped doing. The bars of soap in my 'knicker drawer' was inherited from my grandmother (she used lavender soap in hers) and also lavender soap stored in between the sheets in the 'ottoman' (think it was supposed to keep the moths out or so she said!).

I worked in an office for a very large company in the 60's and we were really told off if we ordered telephone message pads - we had to use all scrap paper especially misprints from the printing machine/photocopier, halved across and then halved down so 4 sheets out of footscap/A4 and then stapled together at the top. Head of Department would be furious if he got a message on a printed pad!

Beachcomber371

We don't throw away leftover food from the dinner table in our house we put it in the fridge for a ready made lunch the next day. We must save a considerable amount of time and money this way i.e. time preparing lunch and shopping for food, and money buying food and fuel to cook it, as well as leaving a smaller environmental footprint too.:)

Davesnave

Old potting compost is often full of weed seeds, vine weevil larvae & various nasties, so I put it in an old microwave & heat till it hits 100 degrees C, then add Osmocote fertilizer and away it goes again. Of course the electricity and the additional fertilizer have costs, but you'd need the latter or something similar anyway. I've done this for some time now adding the 'old' stuff to new with no problems. If you don't mind a few weeds, just dry out your compost over winter and add the fertilizer next spring without microwaving.

harryhound

Or make your own seed and potting compost, John Innes style:

http://www.johninnes.info/about.htm

I believe "Gardening Which?" had advice on how to do it a couple of winters ago. (Library/web site?)

Composted turf is the sustainable substitute for peat in the recipe.

An ordinary domestic oven can substitute for a microwave, but it does create a distinctive aroma in the kitchen

Davesnave

I agree that loam & sand are essential in a decent potting mix, but I think we might be going off-topic here. Good garden soil is free and may do the job; depends on your locality. Not going down the peat/sustainability avenue today....big can of worms!

worbikeman

Printer ink: print documents in gray scale 80%-50% (select all then change colour), photos can be printed with a lighter hue (in print dialogue box), both saving black ink.Milk: add ice cubes or tapwater to cartons of milk.Dont have your microwave or other items with a clock on all the time, just switch it on when you need it.Do your shopping close to the time when the supermarket closes - my local discounts all previously discounted produce (on its sell-by date) to 9p or 10p at the end of the night. Not always much left, but I find that stuff can be frozen, bags of fruit can be blendered for juice and yoghurt will keep over a week unopened as the bacteria preserves itself. They err on the side of caution with use-by dates, compared to when we were kids!

Elsiesgirl

Georgiabay wrote: »

Free samples of face creams, shampoo etc. always contain more than you can use in one go so I keep a few small empty pots that I use to squeeze the contents into and then cut the sachets open completely and wipe out what's left with my fingers to use straight away. It's surprising how much you can get out of them.

I do this with all cosmetics as far as possible. I always have clean empty pots handy. The thicker or more expensive the cream is the more is left when you think it's empty. Just be careful not to cut yourself when sawing through a thick plastic bottle with a bread knife.:rotfl:

Lindsay-Lou

After washing paint brushes in a little cheap shampoo rub in some (equally cheap!) hair conditioner to keep the brushes perfectly supple for the next use.

Stephen_Leak

Marvo434 wrote: »

RAZOR BLADES:

There is nothing scientific about this, but in my opinion multi blades often stop shaving you well NOT because they are blunt but because of all the hair that gets trapped between the blades, meaning the blades aren't touching your skin efficently.
After every shave I now run my electric toothbrush across the front face of the blades and across the back. It gets most (if not all) of those hairs out and I am definetly using each blade for days longer.

I concur with this absolutely. However, I use a mega-cheap "value" toothbrush for the task. And, if you are careful to only use it across the front of the razor, you don't end up shaving the toothbrush's bristles and it lasts longer.

PS. Obviously, cultivating "designer stubble" over a weekend also saves 2 day's wear and tear on your razor, cleaning toothbrush and face with no effort or expenditure whatsoever!