Money making & money saving
Do you know how expensive men’s hair cuts are? I almost fell to the ground when Tony told me that his most recent paid haircut was £11. We live in a small village with two barbers, so it’s not as though we are paying London prices. After that, I decided that I’d swot up on how to cut Tony’s hair myself. Gulp.
Should you get a GHD Air hairdryer? Yes.
As I’m sure you’ve come to understand, I’m a bargainista. I like getting great deals and I don’t like spending money. A GHD Air costs £89 from Amazon
I’d read a ton of reviews a few months ago, with bloggers finding that a GHD Air had fallen into their lap or landed on their Blogger HQ desk – which is Blogger Talk for “I got this for free and therefore it is amazing”. But unlike these bloggers, I went out and spent my own, hard earned money, on a GHD Air. And I’ll tell you what – it was the best money I have ever spent.
As I mentioned when I was talking about reverse washing your hair, I’ve got long, thick hair that gets straightened most of the time. My routine would take a good hour to wash, dry and straighten – which is a lot of time when you think about it. I’d earned some Amazon vouchers (thanks Swagbucks and Instagc) which helped me to lower the cost – always handy. You can also use Flubit – the offer for each person is different, but at the time, they priced it at £79, saving £10. If you don’t have Amazon vouchers to spend then I strongly recommend trying Flubit out. I’ve placed 4 orders with them now and I’ve not had any problems – just prices lower than Amazon!
In short, yes, the GHD Air
In our house at the moment, we are both crazy busy. Tony and I work complete opposite schedules, I get home an hour before he has to leave for work, so cooking together is a thing of the past. I’ve come to rely on our slow cooker more and more so that I can contribute to our evening meals.
A recent visit to The One Stop found me with 4 packs of tomatoes for 10p each, and a Co-op raid gave me a pack of chillis for 10p. Can you see where this is going? Homemade pasta sauce of course!
I quartered all the tomatoes and threw them in, adding mushrooms, a whole pepper, an onion, 2 chillis and a good selection of herbs and spices, and set the slow cooker on “low” as I left for work.
Tony was left with very strict instructions to stir regularly and to take photographs throughout the cooking. About an hour before I got home, he thickened the sauce up using cornflower. I still haven’t mastered making sauces in the slow cooker that aren’t liquidy messes before adding cornflower. Any ideas?
All in all, the ingredients cost us:
40p tomatoes
7p chillis
30p one whole pepper
25p half a punnet of mushrooms
18p onion
£1.20 for enough pasta sauce for 6 individual servings. Combined with pasta for 29p from Aldi (1/2 pack used) and some pork sausage meat (1/2 pack) I found in Tesco for 37p (in the frozen section with the stuffing balls – worth a look to see if there is still any), we had delicious pasta and sausage meatballs meal for just 36.5p each.
Of course, buying fresh tomatoes at full price would make this a costly meal, so I only buy reduced tomatoes to turn into pasta sauce. Or you can grow them later in the year. The sauce freezes really well too, so is a great money saver. Also great for using up everything that looks as though it is about to go off – the mushrooms in this had seen better days.
There are loads of slow cooker recipes everywhere you look. I don’t tend to follow any recipes, but rather throw in anything and everything and see what I end up with.
Did you know that you can cook jacket potatoes in a slow cooker?
Using a tumble dryer is expensive! I’ve worked out that my tumble dryer costs 50p per load to run, and we do between 2-4 loads of washing a week. Appliances Online have a handy guide that tells you how much tumble dryers will cost to run per year, which you can find here.
In summer I don’t use the tumble dryer at all, but despite my thriftiness, I refuse to get rid of our tumble dryer. Having washing drying on your radiators for days on end does not make for pleasant living conditions, especially when they fail to dry and your house starts smelling moldy. However, I have managed to greatly reduce how much the tumble dryer costs to run, following a few steps:
Here are some more handy laundry tips:
6 tips for looking after you washing machine
Five thrifty laundry tips
Make your own liquid detergent
Make your own washing powder
Thrifty laundry room makeover
You’re using too much washing powder
You’ve just washed your hair, but it still feels greasy and heavy? That’s because there’s a build up of product in your hair weighing it down. You can buy expensive product removal shampoos, such as Toni and Guy Cleanse shampoo for £5.99 or Bumble and Bumble Sunday shampoo for £17, but there’s a much cheaper alternative and you probably have it in your house already.
Bicarbonate of soda is often praised for it’s cleaning qualities, but did you know that you can also use it to de-grease your hair? Just mix a teaspoon full in with the usual amount of shampoo you use per wash, adding a little water to form a paste. Then use it as normal shampoo on your hair, massaging into your scalp. Lead it for a few minutes then take care to rinse it all out. Follow with conditioner and you’re all done. You can just mix the bicarb with water to form a paste, but I like the texture and lathering that using shampoo gives it. After using this, my hair feels lighter, is more manageable and most importantly, it is no longer greasy the moment I’ve washed it.
How does it work? The bicarb eats away at the dirt and product residue that has built up over time, leaving your hair in much better condition. You don’t even have to use bicarb every time you wash your hair, just do it when your hair is feeling heavy or seems to get greasy more easily than usual. For me, this is about every 6-8 weeks. The best thing is that if you don’t have any bicarb in the house, you can pick some up from any supermarket for £1 or less.
Try it and let me know what it does to your hair.