Some good tips so far.
Here are some of ours.
Shampoo & conditioner - the kids would never empty the bottles so I grabbed them from the bin and added a bit of water. I would get another ten shampoos out of every bottle, I've been years without myself opening a new bottle of shampoo or conditioner.
Tins - yes, we were told to not use dented cans. The reason was, back in those days canning was not quite so meticulously done, rthere was poorer quality control. So as long as the dent hasn't opened a seam, it won't matter. If the can goes off, it will make it bulge alarmingly. A dented but non-bulging can is going to be OK. But yes, don'tleave it too long before use because they all break down after a few years.
Gourmet poverty food - where possible, cook your own from seasonal, fresh ingredients. There are some recipes which are even better at beating poverty.
For example, yesterday difficult child 3 & I went food shopping in Chinatown. And the butcher is a classic case of supply & demand - I found really cheap osso bucco, because few people in that area know what those cuts are. At a more European butcher that cut of meat sells for twice as much. So the trick - again, buy in season, buy what is cheap and buy out of area for cheap specialty cuts. Also, buy in bulk and freeze the excess. For example, I saw whole pork scotch fillet for $10 a kilo when pork medallions were selling for $20 a kilo. So I bought a whole piece of pork and took it home and cut it up - hey presto, pork medallions at half the price!
A lot of butchers will even cut it up for you - I buy whole beef rump and get the butcher to cut it up for me, so I get half-price rump steak. I then use ONE steak for a stir-fry meal that feeds six people.
Last night I also bought a boiler fowl, very cheap. A fraction of the price of fresh ckicken. I used it to make Asian-style chicken stock and tonight I used that stock, plus the cooked chicken meat it also produced, to make chicken risotto for difficult child 3 (enough left over for lunch for him tomorrow) and chicken and vegetable soup for me and DG. I also put pork wontons in the soup (I bought a bulk packet in Chinatown yesterday). A tasty, cheap, optional extra. And I have enough chicken stock plus cooked chicken left over for doing this three times over. I have other good recipes that use the same ingredients. I can freeze the chopped chicken meat and stock, until I need it. It also tastes far better than any shop-bought stock.
Also, chicken thigh fillets are cheaper than chicken breast fillets and also taste better. You can use thigh fillets for a wider range of recipes, such as tandoori chicken, satay chicken, stir-fries and many others.
When times are really tough - make risotto, pasta, gnocchi, or roast vegetables.
Growing your own vegetables - if you're worried about using expensive water, then invest in a rainwater tank and use that to water the vegetable garden. We have no choice, we have serious water restrictions which means we MUST use rainwater.
Keeping chickens - buy chooks which are about to get killed off after serving a year or so as battery hens. They are really cheap but once you put them in your home free-range set-up, you will get a lot more eggs out of them as well as weed-eaters and compost-producers.
Bottled water - don't buy it, it's a rip-off and bad for the environment. But the kids do buy bottled drinks occasionally, and we keep the bottles. I fill tem from the tap and keep supplies of bottled water in the car and around the house. When a bottle gets too manky a soak in bleach can help, as long as it gets thoroughly rinsed out. Eventually we have to throw them away.
I make things with old drink cans, old drink bottles etc. I make toys for the budgies.
For gifts I do my best to make things. Especially food. Jams, biscuits, sauces. I preserve my own home-grown herbs, I make my own exfoliating body scrub that I priced at $50 in the shops. It costs me a fraction of a dollar and smells wonderful. Because it's so cheap I don't feel guilty using it to clean my hands of cooking smells or gardening dirt. Or even machinery oil and dirt. It's really effective and leraves my hands wonderfully clean, fragrant and moisturised.
Vacuum cleaner bags - I have multiple reasons for emptying out the otherwise-dosposable bags. My cleaner (I need him, even though he's fairly useless) won't pick things up, he uses the vacuum cleaner as a garbage disposal unit, so I empty the bag out to salvage Lego pieces, hair ribbons, jewellery, Barbie doll bits and anything else he decided he was too lazy to try to pick up. I've got it to a fine art, I don't need to go bathe afterwards. if I do need to wash, I have my cheap exfoliating scrub...
Marg
