Save the pennies and....

Now that is the way to do it. Give people incentive for cutting down on energy use, Bravo:

Two French energy companies will be offering their customers up to €120 off their bills in the spring if they reduce their consumption this winter.

TotalEnergies and Engie have responded to a request from the French government, which asked the suppliers to help reduce overall energy usage and thus diminish the risk of shortages and potential power cuts over the winter.

Ali) I prefer to use kitchen towel. You can fold a couple of sheets of kitchen paper, tuck them up your sleeve or in a pocket, and when you pull them out they are still wwhole, entire aand useable. I find tissues too soft and too inclined to crumple and tear, so you pull a clean tissue out of a pocket or sleeve and it is unuseable.

I think most of us do loads of money saving things and follow the well known frugal sites. The only way I will be able to save this winter is by lowering the food budget which is pretty small as it is. It will be a long winter for most of us.

Yammy
Ditch the paper hankies, and buy an extra toilet roll or 2.
Just use what you need. Squares/ lengths can also be folded to go in your handbag.
Aldi's do a large kitchen roll for about £1.99. I use it for crafting messes and it's great.

OxfordGran

A heavy door curtain, absorbing draughts, cold, noise,
old fashioned but effective,
keeps the hallway cosy and quiet, keeps precious heat in the home.

ALSO
Letterbox draught excluders.
Door draft excluders.
Go around closed windows and doors with a lighted candle to work out where the draughts are coming from, and then bung up with blu tack or white tack, or cover with plastic sheeting.
Lots of draughts can come down thru your lofts, so do whatever you can to stop that. Maybe tack carpet around the hatch, so it'll act as a draught excluder once the hatch is back in place.
Thicker curtains on windows for the winter, and give yourself a different pattern to look at while you can get the summer curtains washed. Or put curtain liners up.
Wear socks under your slippers, t-shirts under your nightclothes.
Wear leggings or thicker tights under trousers. An extra t-shirt under blouses.

Shinamae

I wash most things now on a 14 minute wash, it is at 40° and I have it at the highest spin speed. I remember when there were no such thing as washing machines and I doubt many people spent 14 minutes doing a hand wash…?

I'm only 56 but gosh, would I love a mangle!!
We did handwashing at boarding school and we used mangles. It was amazing how much water we could get out.
I imagine there would be some we could get out of spun clothes, and blankets & duvets!

Shinamae

Sinamae, thanks. I had thought of taking the lump hammer to the bag of hardened soda and bashing it on a concrete slab outdoors.

I have now tried dissolving a large lump in water. It took overnight soaking to do it. However I have a pillow case with a bad stain where the dog chewed his dirty old tennis ball, and a short soak in the resulting soda solution did the trick.

Foxyferret

I turn sauce bottles upside down and balance them carefully

on top of the new ones when you have used some. I do it with hand wash bottles and washing up bottles too. You get every little bit out.

I have done this at a dd’s house - after finding 2 or more large bottles of ketchup with just a little bit in the bottom. Decant into a 3rd fuller one, rinse and ditch the empty ones. Gives me pleasure to make space in her crammed pull-out larder!

This really is pennies....
My bank has a 'round-up' option on my account, so if I spend between £2.01 and £2.99 on something, they'll round it up to £3.00 and put the extra into my savings account. But there's also the option to double the round-up amount, which I chose to do.
I don't actually spend a lot and only leave the house once a week so there aren't many transactions but in the 5 months I've been doing this, I've had an extra £38.87 transferred into my savings.

Blimey Suzyb what sort of car are you driving that would cost £901 a year to insure? I’m 71, drive a fairly powerful car, do a high-ish mileage and pay around £300.
I follow most of the ideas in this thread, including drying out orange peel for the fire, which my parents did years ago.

Caleo

Shinamae, apologies for being a nuisance. Can you tell me if it's okay to put hard lumps of washing soda in the drawer in the machine ? Do hard lumps of washing soda dissolve? Do you know an easy way to break up washing soda that has gone solid?

The soda does tend to go hard so I just take the bag and give it a good bashing to soften it up. I think if I did a longer wash it would be fine but I don’t wanna risk it as I only do a 14 minute wash except for sheets when I do a 44 minute wash….? So it’s most of the fabric conditioner drawer with white vinegar then a splash of a nice strong smelling floral disinfectant although I usually try to use lemon which for some reason it’s very difficult to find at the moment…?

Oopsadaisy, I will try that. It may work, as I sometimes put a large lump of it in the toilet pan before I scrub it. The main thing is I must not ever use a food container for dissolving washing soda.

caleo can you mix it with a drop of hot water? It’s going to get wet anyway.

Shinamae, apologies for being a nuisance. Can you tell me if it's okay to put hard lumps of washing soda in the drawer in the machine ? Do hard lumps of washing soda dissolve? Do you know an easy way to break up washing soda that has gone solid?

Thanks Shinamae. I'll try it.

I have been using white vinegar in the rinse for months with complete success.

GrannyBear1

I don't buy semi-skimmed milk any more, 1 pint packs (plastic supermarket bottles) are getting on for double the price they were a year ago. So now, I buy 1 pint of full cream milk and measure out half of what I need, using my kitchen scales and a small milk jug, then top up to the full amount with water. If there is any left over, I cover the milk jug with a bit of foil and pop it in the fridge for next time. It was a bit of a faff to begin with, but became second nature remarkably quickly.

Seriously??

My dd bought me a multi functional air fryer two Christmas’s ago. One with two compartments. Around that time my oven packed in, well I’ve never replaced my oven and can honestly say I’ve not really missed it that much, only for baking large cakes and pasta bakes and such but I do smaller ones in the air fryer.
Most things you fry you can do in the air fryer such as sausages, burgers, small pizzas or cut large pizzas in half. We’re vegan so have never cooked meat in it so don’t know how that would turn out. It’s very economical as most things only take around 10 to 15 minutes to cook depending on what temperature you use.

My tumble dryer also gave up the ghost two years ago and I’ve never replaced that. Instead I’ve set up a rotary washing line in the spare room which takes loads. I’ve got it in a huge plant pot filled with earth and pebbles around the top. It’s a bit wobbly sometimes but I’ve plans to fill it with cement instead. ?
Doesn’t take long to dry after a good spin on 1200.

I’ve not replaced my dishwasher after that stopped working.

Casdon

You can dry it anywhere though, surely? I was thinking of putting it in a wire basket on the windowsill in the spare room where it would dry naturally, it would make the room small nice too.

Thst's a good idea.

Had our car renewal yesterday which was £901 per year (which is for a 3 year fixed term) which was a significant increase from last year. Rather than accepting and renewing it my dh made a phone call and just from talking to the advisor (who was so helpful and made useful suggestions) we eventually got it down to £560. I’m now the main policyholder as I’m 3 years younger than dh and we’ve reduced our annual mileage as we’re happy to keep it to 8k per annum together with a slight increase in the excess.

I turn sauce bottles upside down and balance them carefully

on top of the new ones when you have used some. I do it with hand wash bottles and washing up bottles too. You get every little bit out.

Rarely eat meat. No spray cleaning stuff, no conditioner in washing and buy giant bottles of washing up liquid to decant. I find that generally you tend to use more in bigger bottles, so decant into smaller ones. Hand soap instead of liquid soap.

You can dry it anywhere though, surely? I was thinking of putting it in a wire basket on the windowsill in the spare room where it would dry naturally, it would make the room small nice too.

But our airing cupboard isn't warm enough to dry orange peel.

kittylester

DaisyL

Dry orange peel in the airing cupboard for firelighters, stick last sliver of soap to new bar, Secret Santa for Christmas so all grown ups only get one present, heating only on for a short time morning and evening and wear more clothes!

If you can dry orange peel in your airing cupboard then you tank is not properly insulated and will be costing money.

It’s actually a really good idea to use dried orange peel though, I hadn’t heard that one before, I looked it up and apparently the natural oils in the peel get the temperature high when you light it - eco friendly too.