Dairy-free oat milk for 26c per litre

I make dairy-free milk for my allergic daughter for just 26c per litre! I make oat milk at home, and it tastes just like the shop-bought version that we used to buy on special for $2 per litre. I also use it in desserts, baking and cereal, even though I’m not dairy-free. It’s even cheaper than prepared powdered cow’s milk, which I recently priced at 80c per litre!

Here is the recipe (costed out using Coles home brand ingredients) -

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats 120g (22c)

4 cups water

1 tsp brown sugar (2c) - optional

1 tsp sunflower oil (2c)

Method:

1. Blend all the ingredients in a blender for one minute

2. Strain through a muslin or a nut milk bag (I use old muslin baby swaddles).

3. Store in the fridge for up to five days.

My husband and I eat other dairy products and my daughter still has two cups of calcium-fortified, shop-bought, non-dairy milk per day as a drink, but we now use at least three litres less of shop-bought milk per week, working out to a saving of over $300 per year!

Dishwashing liquid breaks down hard to remove stains

I have found a cheap and effective solution for tough laundry stain removal! Stains such as fats or body odours can be notoriously hard to remove. Normal washing powders may be made for getting out dirt and stains but not for breaking down fats and body fluids. To combat the problem, I simply add a squirt of dishwashing liquid to the wash, along with my normal powder and soaker and it works like a charm. After all, it breaks down grease and fatty food residue when doing dishes, it makes sense for it to work on clothes too!

Sanity saved with Christmas wish books

When my children were young, I dreaded the arrival of Christmas catalogues and their enticing displays of new and expensive toys. So, some months before Christmas, I purchased cheap scrap books and the children spent some time covering them with Christmas paper. These became their Christmas Wish Books!
 
As each new catalogue arrived, the kids would carefully go through it and select any item they would like to receive. They would then cut out the picture and glue it into their book, with no limit on how many items they had in their book. However, the children knew they would not get everything in their wish book. On Christmas Eve, the kids would leave the books out for Father Christmas, who would be able to look through them and select one or two of the items to leave in their Santa sacks.
 
This worked so well for us in our one income, cash strapped household. I knew what each child wanted and I could see how much their gift choices were; this meant there was no rude shock when I went shopping for the items. I was also able to tell grandparents what toys the children were interested in, so they were able to purchase a gift knowing it was something the child wanted.
 
Even as the children outgrew Father Christmas, they still liked to make up a Christmas Wish Book - just to be sure they received something other than socks, jocks and hankies! I've never put a dollar value on what I saved, but I know it saved my sanity at a very stressful time of the year.

Fluffy towels from cheap conditioner

My washing requires a fabric softener as my laundry gets hard and coarse if they're washed and dried without it, but I hate spending up to $4.00 per bottle, so came up with this cheap solution.

It works brilliantly. I now buy a home brand or extremely cheap hair conditioner (no, NOT a shampoo!) This costs $0.80c to $1.90, per 500 mls or one litre.

All you do is squirt a tiny 10 cent size dollop into your fabric softener holder, then fill up the remainder with very hot water.

I now have fluffy towels all the time, and the cheap conditioner option has worked out to be a bottle every six months or so, instead of spending lots of money per week on commercial 'fabric softeners'.