Today’s the last day to register for the virtual Spring into Organising workshop. The handbook is done and I can’t wait to share all this information with you. We already have people registered from Australia, the US and South Africa. Are you next?

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Since I started using Pinterest, I’ve been a huge, huge fan.

Mainly because I used it to store and organise my bookmarks.

Now that that’s done, I’ve been using it like a second Google.

I have a love for washi tape (that’s a story for another post) and recently I went into Pinterest and typed “washi tape” and tens of lovely pictures popped up on my screen.

Too lovely.

Anyway, the point is I search for things I know I want to find, and sometimes I also find other things I didn’t know I wanted.

Like handmade liquid soap.

When I clicked over and read the post, I thought, “no way, it can’t be this easy” but duly put glycerine on the shopping list so I could try it this weekend.

It is EASY as pie, people.

1 cup grated soap flakes (5 minutes – and I didn’t even use a whole bar of soap)
10 cups of water (2.5 L)
1 Tablespoon glycerine

(you can add essential oils if you want to play with fragrances)

That’s it.

Combine all in a pot, heat til the soap has dissolved and let it cool completely.
It will look like it’s not going to set (mine looked like milky water for the longest time) but my best advice is to forget about it. I left it overnight and when I checked it on Sunday morning, LIQUID SOAP!

Use a funnel to pour into bottles and enjoy.

Over 2 L of liquid soap for about R7 (one bar of soap cost me R10 and I used about 70%)

I chose a neutral, non-girly fragrance so that if it worked we could use it as shower gel too.

Next up, I’m going to use baby soap and make some baby foam bath – I can’t WAIT – I’m on a soap-making high

Here’s my Pinterest link if you want to see what tickles my fancy.

As an aside, a few weekends ago I went to do a load of laundry and after I screamed in frustration because the nanny hadn’t put fabric softener on the list, I went to my friend Google (the real one) to look for alternate solutions.

(I really needed to do some laundry and I hate getting behind)

I found lots of links that said a quarter cup of white vinegar would do the trick.

Well, friends, I’m happy to report that we haven’t used “real” fabric softener since then but I have been through about 2 bottles of white vinegar

There is absolutely no vinegar smell – the clothes just come out smelling clean.

Do any of you have some tried and tested homemade recipes for cleaning solutions? Please share links and so on in the comments and let’s all save some money.

We go through around 12 – 14 nappies a day and I’m proud to say I still have not bought or used ONE fancy nappy disposal bag.

Why?

I use bread bags. And apple bags. And bags from the CD and DVD stores.

They work beautifully and they’re free.

When you’re spending thousands on nappies, bum creme and baby wipes every month for your babies, you save where you can!

What do you do to save money that others may find unconventional?

P.S. I don’t see us running out anytime soon. Either I hoarded quite a bit before the babies were born or we eat lots of bread and rolls. Or both

pic from the Household Organising File

(part of the Organise your Home ecourse) 

Do you menu plan?

Menu planning is probably the one thing I do that saves me the MOST time every single week.

It’s also going to save you mo.ney when you start using up all the food in the freezer and in the back of the cupboards. Oh, and not doing so much impulse shopping.

Note – you should do your menu planning BEFORE you go to the shops to do your grocery shopping

Here are the five steps I use:

1. Go to your freezer and cupboards to see what food you have that you need to or want to use, and make a list.

2. Write out a menu plan for a week (if you do weekly shopping) or longer, using recipes to use up that food.

3. Add any items that you need additionally to your weekly shopping list and do your shopping.

4. Stick the menu plan to your fridge.

5. Follow the plan to the letter, or move things around and have Monday’s meal on Wednesday, etc, etc. At least you have the ingredients for all the meals available.

Now you don’t have to rack your brain every night wondering what to cook.

You have a PLAN.

Another tip that will save you lots of time is to cook something on a Sunday afternoon. This meal is not for eating that day, but for freezing.

When you have a busy day it’s easy to just defrost the meal and have a healthy supper on the table in minutes.

We went through a stage where we didn’t buy any meat for two months while we finished everything in the freezer and started on the cupboards.

You see, we all get into a habit of buying the same groceries every week without checking if we really need it.

If you’re not already menu planning, I’d like to encourage you to at least start. Do so for at least a month and give it a good go. If it REALLY doesn’t work with your personal style then so be it.

If you already do menu planning, then your challenge for this week is to only buy perishables for your next shopping trip and eat from your freezer and cupboards.

I was at a store the other day buying formula for the babies when I saw this:

The small tin (400g) costs R46 and the big tin (900g) costs R152,90. I couldn’t believe it!

The big tin should cost in the region of R103,50 or even less. A lot of people would assume that the bigger one is cheaper (I threw big tins into my trolley before I started thinking) but first do your sums and make sure you’re getting a good deal!

There you go – trying to save you money

I hate wasting food with a passion!

First of all it’s money and also, I can’t help thinking about all the hungry people right on my very doorstep.

So I have a few ways I use up food so that it doesn’t spoil.

1. Use veggies to make stirfry (as in picture above). In fact, in the above picture, I had some chicken, some spaghetti and veggies. By cooking this one meal, I managed to use all of those up which makes me very, very happy.
2. If there are still veggies left (this particular night, there was also a lot of broccoli), throw into the freezer for use in soups whenever you get around to it.
3. We store bread in the fridge anyway because it’s warm in Johannesburg and bread goes mouldy very quickly. Sometimes we still can’t get to eat the bread quickly enough so I toss the bread in the freezer. I really like saving time so I package them in packs of 2 slices so that I can simply grab a bag, pop the bread into the toaster and I’m good to go.

Those are the only foodstuffs that spoil in this house because when I cook, I cook enough for two meals and immediately freeze the other meal.

What other tips can you share? What works in your house?

yayyy to cutting up this credit card!

to be fair, I don’t use this one as an actual credit card, but as a savings account

What did you declutter today?

P.S. If you need to get your money sorted, check out the Financial Freedom e-course

I LOVE grocery shopping.

I love browsing through the cleaning products aisle and looking through all the gorgeous fresh fruit and vegetables to see if anything inspires me to cook.

The only thing is it wasn’t working for me.

Why?

Because it took FOREVER to do and I’d still get home without everything I needed and have exceeded our grocery budget!

So I changed a few things:

1. I eat before I set out the door
If you go shopping on a hungry stomach, you end up buying all sorts of rubbish, like chips, chocolates, sweets, doughnuts, etc. Not only that, I also noticed that I’d throw in other bits and bobs that were not on my list but somehow I justified to myself that I had to have it!

Anyone relate?

2. I plan my menu for the following week before I go shopping
I know exactly what I need to have to cook the meals on my menu planner, so I do a quick scan of my pantry cupboards to check the essentials, and then add things to my shopping list.

I then check to see if we have enough cereals, milk and yoghurts for breakfasts, fruit for snacks and milk, cheese and beef slices for lunches.

3. I make it into a game
I like to leave an hour total for driving there and back, and doing the shop. This has forced me to shop at a different time to the masses which is an hour before the shops close on a Friday night.

I also divide the monthly budget into 4 weeks and deduct some money for incidentals (bread and milk) during the week. Now armed with my budget, I see if I can get it all done and still come in under my target amount.

That’s how I get it done and stay within my budget.

What works for you? Please share in the comments.