DIY 'mixed vegie bags' makes meals faster and easier

This simple tip saves me money and time every day when preparing meals. Whenever I buy frozen vegetables, I bring them home and immediately divide them into portions, placing them into ziplock bags, then popping them in the freezer. I often divide up broccoli, peas, cabbage, sprouts, carrots into the same bag. This way, they take up less space in the freezer and I know exactly how many meals they will serve. None ever get wasted and they can be either stored together or placed with other food to make it instantly possible to grab a complete meal. The same method works well with fresh food in preparation for things such as school fruit or lunch breaks, when time is at a premium in the mornings!!

Full strength DIY 'Dettol' spray for just 2c a bottle!

A little supermarket research led me to making a huge saving on keeping germs at bay! When my two young children had a gastro bug, I needed anti-bacterial spray to clean up and stop the spread of germs, which vinegar didn't touch. The cheapest anti-bacterial spray I could find was Dettol anti-bacterial spray which cost $4.20 for 500ml. On reading the active ingredients it said it contained Benzalkonium Chloride 0.095%. Then, I saw that a bottle of Coles brand disinfectant was $1.40 for two litres. I read the ingredients and saw Benzalkonium Chloride 1%. The instructions said to dilute it in a ratio of 1:20, or 30ml to 600ml water. So I bought that one, made up the solution and put it in an old spray bottle I already had. It worked just as well and cost just over 2c per spray bottle of prepared solution, compared to $4.20 for the Dettol spray! While Coles brand disinfectant says it can only be used on “floors, walls, bathroom and toilet areas”, not in kitchen areas like the Dettol spray, for me these were the only areas that I needed to disinfect and worked a treat!

Home-made floor mop

My home-made Enjo-style floor mop is a joy to use and cost me just $6.00 compared to the brand name alternative! I had been hearing about the wonders of the Enjo cleaning cloths and mops for some time, but the price tag always stopped me from buying one!

Using a hint from the Vault, I purchased half a metre of quality polar fleece for $6.00 and cut it into eight decent sized cleaning cloths, they worked great. Then I looked at my sad sponge mop. It was in a terrible state and the sponge needed replacing - so I decided to try and make my own Enjo-style mop head!

I took one of the cloths I had cut and stitched some elastic around the edges. I now had a removable mop head, and with a little vinegar and eucalyptus I had a sparkling floor. Now every time I mop the floor, I just rinsed out the cloth, dry and replace!

Greener household cleaners

Making our own cleaners has saved us a fortune over the years and we have saved the environment a little too. '1001 Greener Household Hints' by John Schluter is full of simple household cleaning ideas and we went straight out and bought some five litre bottles, spray bottles and some of the suggested basic cleaning ingredients. The following instructions are from the book:

Air freshener: Mix one teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda with one tablespoon of white vinegar. Add two cups of water. Store the mixture in a pump spray bottle. Add scented oils for fragrance.

Spray and wipe cleaner: Mix two tablespoons of cloudy ammonia, a half cup of white vinegar, two tablespoons of washing-up detergent and four litres of warm water. We stored this in large labelled bottles and used in spray bottles as needed.

Bathroom disinfectant liquid: Dissolve 12 drops of eucalyptus oil in 1ml of methylated spirits and then add eight cups of warm water. We used this in spray bottles also.

We paid $5.00 for the book but have saved hundreds in the years since we began making our own cleaning products.