Sock it to draughts with cheap 'door snakes'

With every winter, it's important to make our heating systems as efficient as possible. Draughts under doors (both to outside and to rooms not currently being used) let heat escape, driving heating costs up. Door snakes are often advertised at around $10 each. This means for a whole house you may be looking close to $100. Instead, you can use a pair of men's long, knee-high socks! These can be filled with rice (or sand if you have easy access to it). Either tie a knot or see the top to seal. You can purchase ind the socks at cheap shops or ok shops, use the cheapest rice you can buy and you can make a house-full for less than the price of one commercially produced door snake.

My uni studies STOPPED me biting my nails!

I've been enjoying long, beautiful nails for 30 years, thanks to a method called behaviour modification! I was required to do it as part of a psychology unit at university. It is a method which rewards good behaviour and punishes bad behaviour. This is the method:

1. You determine what you want to change: I want to stop biting my fingernails.
2. You determine what would be a good reward. I will give myself $1.00 coin.
3. You determine what would be a good punishment. I will give $2.00 to charity. Note: It is best that the punishment is worse than the reward, so you can obviously achieve your positive goal ASAP. The simpler your rewards and punishments are, the better. I used the money to purchase a scarf but you could do it for anything.
4. You work out what you need to motivate yourself to achieve that positive outcome. I used hand cream daily, I used oil to massage the cuticles daily, I painted my nails with nail hardener and once the nails grew past my fingers, I got manicures regularly.
5. Draw up a table as shown below, to keep track of your progress daily to get to your eventual goal:

Day 1 – Outcome: I put my fingers in my mouth So you put a cross in the negative box and take the punishment. Negative Positive Punishment Reward x $2.00 paid to charity

Day 2 – Outcome: I didn’t put my fingers in my mouth So you put a cross in the positive box and take the reward Negative Positive Punishment Reward x $1.00 paid to myself

From memory I stopped biting my nails after the second week and kept going until I grew my nails to the length I wanted them. I found that it took about 10 weeks to achieve the outcome I wanted. I didn’t think I would get long fingernails, but I did and continue to do so!

Dishcloth keeps vegetables fresh

We buy our vegetables every week at our local Sunday market. Occasionally, we fail to get through all the produce by the end of the week, and we're left with some sad looking vegetables in the fridge. I just hate waste!
 
We've found that putting a Chux dishcloth, or any absorbent dishcloth, in the bottom of our veggie drawers makes a huge difference. It absorbs any moisture from the bottom of the drawer, and leaves our vegetables fresh and crisp for a whole lot longer. Every week, we wipe the drawer, throw the dishcloth in the wash and replace it with a new one for another week of fresh, crisp vegetables. By doing this, we save around $7.00 per week!

ALDI shopping spree

I have read lots of hints about ALDI, about how much money you could save by shopping there. I must say I was sceptical.

I have just returned from my second shopping trip at ALDI and I just had to share my excitement about how much I am saving. I used to shop fortnightly at Woolies, spending between $330 and $400 a fortnight. Now I divide my shopping between ALDI and Woolies. Last fortnight I spent $240; this time I have spent $167. The savings are obvious. I would recommend ALDI to anyone.