Bathroom Tips

Rubbing alcohol--put in a spray bottle & armed with a coffee filter, you can get your windows, mirrors & stainless steel streak free and disinfected. Also, use on phones, knobs/handles/faucets/drawer pulls, etc and TV’s.

Bleach water can be used for disinfecting floors, counters, sinks. Also, if you have a particularly bad odor in your drains, pour a little down to freshen up.

Shower curtain: I just wash mine in washing machine. I take the liner, curtain & rings down as one & just toss it in. Wash by itself (maybe add a little bleach or vinegar to prevent/treat mildew. Then toss in dryer. (it takes too long to line dry).

Bathtub stains: make a paste of peroxide & cream of tartar. Mix well & use old toothbrush, rub into stains & rinse thoroughly.
For lime or rust spots: CLR & steel wool.

Tile: ¾ c bleach & 3 c water. Mix together in spray bottle. Spray & wipe off with damp sponge.

For bad stains/spills on the counters/tub, spray with cleaner & go to something else. Let the cleaner do most of the work while you do something else. Come back later & simply wipe up. Eliminates elbow grease. Also, when you do this, go ahead & put the cleaner in/on the toilet. Come back later, swish, wipe, flush, take off your gloves, wash your hands & you’re done. No more scrubbing toilets.

Use a daily spray on the shower. Tilex makes a daily spray. Just spray it on everyday after your shower. I use the automatic shower sprayer. It keeps mildew & soap scum from forming.

Keep all bathroom supplies in a caddy w/a handle. They sell small ones at the $ Tree and larger ones are at Wal-Mart for about $4. Keep the cleaning supplies locked up if you have little ones, but if everything you need (gloves, sponges, cleaners, old toothbrushes, etc.) is in the caddy, you won’t have to search for anything. Just grab your caddy & go.

You can also use a pumice stone for hard water stains. Or, put ¼ c white distilled vinegar in spray bottle with 1 c water. Mix well, spray hard water/lime spots. Let sit. Go back, rinse w/water.

Ceramic tile: (also in kitchen on backsplashes) ¼ c vinegar, 1/3 c ammonia, ½ c baking soda, 7 c warm water. Mix well. Store in spray bottles. Spray, let sit, wipe with wet sponge.

MISCELLANEOUS
For bathrooms without a lot of cabinet space, get of those over-the-toilet spacesavers & a locking pantry (basically a bookshelf w/doors). Also you can use caddies (w/handles) & clear plastic shoeboxes to organize the things on the shelves. Small boxes w/tops (can be decorative, or the small clear ones 2 to a pack at dollar tree) are great for organizing make-up, hair thingy-ma-bobs, hair barrettes & other small items that don’t need a whole plastic shoebox.

Hang up poufs that you use for bathing, so they dont mildew. I replace mine on the first day of every month.

Make-Your-Own Baby Wipes

Cut a roll of high-quality THICK white paper towels in ½. Mix
together: 2 c distilled water, 2 T baby oil, 2 T baby soap or shampoo. If
your baby is prone to yeast infections, add 1 T of white vinegar. Boil this
mixture. Place paper towels in this mixture. Cool. Put paper towels and
leftover liquid in a 10-cup Tupperware container (or gallon size Ziploc
bag). Pull cardboard insert out & use wipes from the inside out. The last
several wipes you will have to squeeze out the excess liquid to keep from
being too soppy. If your wipes dry out, just shake the bag or container &
they are wet again. Also, you can cut up extra or damaged cloth
diapers/blankets/washcloths/soft shirts for use as reusable wipes.

Homemade Cleaners

Microwave--mix 4 T of baking soda to 1 qt. warm water, wipe out microwave. Don’t forget under the rotating dish & ceiling. It also freshens the microwave.

Ovens--create a mixture of 50% ammonia, 50% water. Store in a spray bottle. For stuck on foods/burnt spots, apply a mixture of baking soda & water directly to the spots. Let stand, for 30 minutes (longer, if really stuck-on). Wipe the surface clean.

Rubbing alcohol--put in a spray bottle & armed with a coffee filter, you can get your windows, mirrors & stainless steel streak free and disinfected. Also, use on phones, knobs/handles/faucets/drawer pulls, etc and TV’s.

Bleach water can be used for disinfecting floors, counters, sinks. Also, if you have a particularly bad odor in your drains, pour a little down to freshen up.

Making it yourself

I found a nifty little blog post about making things yourself at Simply Thrifty

Is there anything you guys make yourself, rather than buying?

I have some things, I will post later:)

Swiffer Pad Refills

I cut some leftover fleece into swiffer sized pads. I just toss them into the washer when I am done..........I have several, so I can do the whole house at one time.

4/8 Grocery Game (post 1/2)

Don't know if any of you know about this website www.grocerygame.com ...

I paid $1 for a 4 week trial. What it does is matches the stores in your area sales (advertised & unadvertised) with coupons that come in your Sunday paper, store coupons and shelf coupons (you know those that you pull out of the little red machine at the store?).

It shows you things you can get free (sale & coupon together to make it free) and things that are worth stocking up on. Some things even with a sale don't make it worth buying (or she tells you to wait b/c there is a coupon coming up soon). Anyways, long story short after the trial period, it's $10 for the first store every 8 weeks (1.25/week) and $5 for each additional store (.625/week). To me, it's worth it, b/c I save over that Wednesday when I shopped.

Here's what I got at the 1st store:
2 6oz. Uncle Ben's Long Grain & Wild Rice on sale 89c each and had 2 coupons for 75c off each = .28 total for both (14c each)
4 2-4ct. Orville Redenbacher popcorn on sale 1.25 each and 4 coupons (shelf) for 40c off each = 3.40 for 4 boxes of popcorn (16 packs) (85c each box)
2 rolls Bounty Basic Paper Towels 1.00 each 2 coupons for .25 off each = 1.50 total (75c each)
1 32oz. Greased Lightning 2.50 each w/ 1.00 off = 1.50
6 XXL Hungry Man Dinners 40% off each price varied - 2 1.00 coupons = ???(cant find receipts...will update later)
6 Totino's Party Pizzas 1.00 each = 6.00
34 6oz. Breyer's yogurt 50c each X 34 = $17 - $5.50 worth of coupons = 11.50 (or .338 each)

total including tax $38.47 total saved with sales & coupons $38.50.....I saved more than I spent.


2nd store:
3 6oz. Chex Mix sale 99c each 3 50c off coupons = 1.47 (or 49c each)

total spent = 1.53 including tax............saved 3.50 (again saved more than i spent)

I went to 2 other stores, but will post about those later.

I didn't go "grocery" shopping, will do that Saturday at w-m. I did pick up lots of cleaners & some other stuff that we could use.

Great deals at Dollar General this week

These are the deals I'll be getting (they have more, though).

They also take coupons...the flyer says so:)

I'll be checking Wal-marts prices on these things tomorrow when I go there. I divided it into categories to make it easier for me to check. I probably won't go to Dollar General until Friday.

Grocery:
15 oz. Glory Canned Vegs 1.00
16 oz. Campbell's Chicken noodle or COM soup 1.00

Paper Products/Trash Bags:
8 rolls Bounty Basic Paper Towels 5.00
24 rolls cottonelle 6.00
Glad trash bags 5.00

Cleaners:
100 oz. Liquid Tide 5.00
16 oz. joy or dawn dish detergent 85c
182 oz. clorox 2.50
56-64 oz. Suavitel fabric softener 3.00
56 oz. Fabuloso 3.00

Beverages/Juice:
2ltr. coke products (limit 5) 90c
48 oz. Hawaiian Punch 1.00

Baby:
Luvs Diapers Jumbo size 7.00

Electronics:
9 volt Energizer battery (chk w-m 1st) 3.00

Housewares:
2 pk. bed pillows (X2) 6.00
bath rugs 4.00

Garden:
24 oz. Spectracide Grass/weed killer 3.00

Pets:
10 lb. Tidy Cats Scoop Litter 5.00

Health/Beauty:
6.4 oz. Colgate whitening toothpaste 1.50
30 ct. Band-aids 1.00

Reusable Swiffer Cloths

For the cleaning pads, I cut some fleece up into the size of the mopping surface. When you get done, you can just take them off and toss in the washer. Saves money and uses up some of those scraps:)

For cleaner, instead of buying the refills, you can spray your fleece pad or the floor with either white vinegar or lemon juice.

Been stung at the Grocery Store Lately???

Okay, I know we've been getting hard for a long while now at the gas pumps, but food is getting outrageous, too.

On the normal average, we spend $500-600 a month on groceries (family of 6). The past 2 months, we've been hitting $600+. This is a good chunk of our income for the month.

Who can live at these rates of inflation? Around here the average COLA raise (cost of living) is about 2-5% (if any). But other things are jumping at much higher precentages. No wonder so many people are losing their homes.

The official USDA July 2007 Food costs said the average to feed MY family is:

Thrifty $680.20
Low-Cost $864.30
Moderate-Cost $1058.40
Liberal $1296.60

Okay, so by these averages, apparently I am doing pretty good at the grocery store....yeah right! Just ask our budget....he's ROFL.

Is anyone else experiencing the quandry of how to cut costs at the check out? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Don't even get me started on fast food or restaurants...this is just the actual grocery costs. Who can afford to eat out these days? Well, anyways, we can't. It costs us $20 for lunch at McD's (& such). Just for 30 days of lunches out would be $600. This doesn't include breakfast or dinner. Restaurants are even higher ($40-50 for dinner)...$1500/mo. Can you imagine?

Please share with me ways to cut down costs...I will post some of the ways I'm going to start being frugal in my next post.