Survey apps and websites

 I thought it might be useful to share some of the apps and websites I've been using recently to earn some extra pennies! I know we could all use a few of them at the moment!

(The app links may not work on a computer, and may need to be clicked on a phone)

In no particular order:

WeAre8 - this is an app where you get notifications to watch an advert and answer a few questions. The ads are usually 15 secs - 1 min long, and you get a few pennies each time, and they give some money to good causes. You have to wait until you have over £1 to be able to cachout to Paypal. And each reward remains as pending for 30 days, so it's a while before you see the benefits. But it's not bad considering it all adds up. (you may need to open that link on a phone, so comment if you want me to send it to you a different way!)

AttaPoll - This is a survey app, you click on the survey to complete it, but sometimes you are screened out. The stars next to it show how likely you are to succeed at the survey and receive payment. You can cash out for an amazon voucher at £2.50, or to Paypal at £3

Influence (used to be called Voxpopme) - On this app you record a video of yourself answering simple questions. Sometimes you will get a series of questions, meaning you can earn several rewards in one go. 

CuriousCat is a survey app. It codes it's surveys with different icons, so you can see straight away how long it ought to roughly take, and how many points it's worth. You can cashout to Paypal when you have £1

PanelOpinion is a survey app. Honestly, I haven't cashed out on this yet, but google to read what other people say about it, if you want more ideas!

Measure (App shows up as MSR) This is another I haven't yet cashed out on, as you need £10. It seems a bit hit and miss when they give you surveys, but sometimes if you open and close the app again, then when you next open it, you'll have surveys show up. It's generally quick once it's set up (profile questions took a while) and the pennies add up! You can redeem for gift cards once you hit £10

OnePulse The more 'pulses' you answer, the more you can earn for the ones which are paid. So you don't earn money from all of them, but you do earn XP which help you level up. The more levels you go up, the more you earn on a paid pulse. Clear as mud, right? I'm always happy to answer questions if you have them! Currently I'm on level 10, earning 15cents for paid pulse. You can cash out to Paypal at $20 (which will then change into sterling when it gets in your account) I don't have a referral, but apparently, you can become friends with other members if you know their username. I don't know if this has any benefits though.

VYPR - you answer 'steers' which are usually worth 10 points for one question, or 40 for a 4-10 question one. You have to get 10,000 points to cash out £5, but honestly it does build up fairly quickly. And it's a quick app to check if you have a couple of minutes spare waiting at the bus stop or wherever. 

OnePoll Answer surveys on a website (no app, so far as I know). Cash out to Paypal when you get to £25, so takes a while. 

YouGov - This is again surveys on a website page, and you have to do £50 worth to get paid. My mum recently hit this payout landmark!

Qmee - this is on an app or on the website. And you can cashout ANY amount to Paypal. There's a daily poll and a quiz, which is worth 3pence. I literally just won the 3p on the quiz and cashed it out to Paypal! You also build up a streak and get extra money on surveys as you have more than a five day streak. 

Finally, PROLIFIC. You'll have to join the waitlist for this one, I don't know how long it will take to get a place, but it's totally worth it if you do! 

That's all for now, or all that i can think of an a tired Friday evening!

* I have included referral links on those schemes which have them, meaning I will likely receive some sort of reward if you sign up. Thank you, I much appreciate it!

Why do I do what I do?

During the market research chat I did recently with a lovely lady called Charlotte, it really made me think about why do I do what I do?
Sustainability and eco-lifestyles are making the news more and more, and I'm so pleased that that's happening. (As a quick aside, I have to mention a fantastic book called The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide by the wonderful Jen Gale. I can't remember how I first found her facebook page and then group, but I quickly devoured all her blog archive and soaked in all the info about how she and her family went for a year buying nothing new. That was several years ago, her year, I mean, and she's continued to live in an eco friendly sustainable-ish way. She recently had her first book published - the aforementioned tome, and it is written in such an inviting way. One night the kids and I read bits of it rather than reading their school reading books, and even were quick to jump on board with the things she said, and how we can implement them in our lives). (Sorry, that wasn't a quick aside, but I think it was a good one!) (Jen's facebook group and her book)

But I think that my reasons for living the way we do - for example, reduced shopping, charity shop bargains,  not buying plastic tat..... probably started out for frugal reasons. I have loved charity shop shopping since as long as I can remember. There was a holiday we went on with my parents somewhere in Devon, when Sophia was little, that the number of charity shops and/or second hand shops visited within a fortnight totalled into the thirties. I've forgotten the exact number, it being nearly ten years ago (wow, that's a lifetime ago? Well, Soph's lifetime anyway!)
But I've been going in charity shops long before that holiday. My parents live very close to a charity shop, so close in fact, that when we went in during the Christmas break, one of the ladies who volunteers there was marvelling at how tall Sophia is now, and remembering her as a tiny baby!)
I love the hunt, finding the exact thing that was on my mental 'look for' list.

  (Another aside, have a mental list looking ahead for what you will be needing. Think of things like the next couple of sizes ahead for your baby or child, look for possible Christmas or birthday presents all year round, know what needs and wants are coming up, and you'll be so much more likely to find what you need, before or when you need it. I love looking out for things for my nieces and friend's children too, so if you're looking for something, I'm happy to keep an eye out for you too!)

As some of you who've been following my blog for a while will know, I love shopping for reduced food. Again, this probably comes from my love of a bargain, but also my love of maths and numbers! But actually, buying 'yellow sticker' items is good for the environment too. It's one that hurts my head a bit, as with reduced items I may end up with more plastic packaging than if I'd chosen a loose fresher item. But, I still think that saving food from the bin is a good option. And I do my best to recycle all the plastic and other packaging that can be recycled. This is also a good option for the person who wishes to eat in a way that's better for the environment, but can't necessarily afford the luxury of more expensive options. Because let's face it, options like free range, organic, loose or free flow (like from a measure out what you want store) do tend to be more expensive options. And sometimes it is definitely worth investing in those, but for those on the knife edge when it comes to finances, there isn't always wiggle room for more ethical eating.

This post was supposed to be about why I do what I do. And I'm not really sure I do know why exactly.  I guess I just feel things in my gut. Sometimes it's to do with no, I'm not going to buy that plastic tat item for £20, but if we see if for £1.50 in the charity shop we might (Specific example here - nerf and similar style guns. I refused to buy them in a 'real' shop, but when we saw one which Jaiden was extremely enamoured with, in the charity shop, I allowed him to spend his money on it!)
The kids and I regularly look at the RRP message that comes up on adverts for children's toy, and discuss how much that £19.99, or £49.99 might mean in terms of how many meals it would feed the family for! But also, how that much money is required for a toy which is single use or single purpose. That's why I love toys like brio or lego which are ageless classics! (Not necessarily the lego sets that are more single purpose, I'm talking about boxes of bricks and accessories, which you can rummage through to your hearts content, and build something that comes out of your imagination!)
And don't get me started on LOL and other mystery eggs. I hate them with a passion, and have done even before I was thinking more about what things are specifically made of.

I like saving money, I like providing my family with what we need, within the funds that we have. I don't agree with getting into debt for things like Christmas presents, or buying stuff for the sake of buying it. And recently, my mind has been made even more aware of what we can do to help save the world. It sounds a bit corny writing it like that, but that's basically what it comes down to. If we want our children to experience all the animals and bits of the world as we experienced them, then we need to act. Things are changing at a too rapid speed, and we need to work together, small changes making big differences.

Anyway, this post got very long and rambling. But maybe I've given you some food for thought, I've certainly given myself things to think about!

The year of January is nearly over*

This has been a very long month. Personally I've had shingles, a sickness bug, and ended the month with an eye infection (I don't know what qualifies it to be called conjunctivitis, the pharmacist I spoke to and got eye drops from seemed to distinguish between an infection and conjunctivitis, so who knows!)
I've also been to work less days than I ought to have (if I hadn't been ill), but more than I felt like I might manage when I was in the midst of all the illness in the first half of the month.

So it's been an interesting month, and obviously I've earned less than I would have done without all the illness, however I'm not too stressed about it all because a) I know I have a loving God who is in control, and I'm continuing to live in faith that we will get through all the ups and down of life. And b) we all know I love a frugal challenge!

So some of the things I'm doing, or planning to do -

Take a freezer and cupboard survey - that way I know exactly what I've got, and what goes with what.

Make a menu plan - Using the surveys, we can plan ahead, and that helps me with work lunches as well as dinners.

Use what we've got - whether that's what's in the freezer and cupboards, or anything that's in the house (including non food items), I'm trying to find solutions with what we already have, rather than buying new. Or being canny with what I do have.
- I discovered that I've really enjoyed eating stir fried veg along with leftover protein, for my work lunches. On a Sunday afternoon I survey the fridge, and any veg that needs using up gets thrown into a big frying pan and sauteed together. Add a bit of garlic, soy sauce, or herbs to mix up the flavours. I might try tomato puree next time, as I appear to have stock piled that!
- I had loads of kidney beans, coconut milk, and onions, plus random veg. I bought some rice and made up a big batch of rice and peas. (And it turned out to be my best batch yet!)
Which we ate for a few days running, plus I froze some for a quick meal another day. So long as you reheat thoroughly, I've never had a problem with reheating rice, but I know some people prefer not to make it.
- I used chicken bones leftover from a meal, to make chicken stock. The kids aren't that great at getting all the meat off the bones, and I can be a little wary about chicken since i had food poisoning last year, so the bones weren't picked bare. However, throwing them in hot water with an onion (I was out of carrots) I made a gorgeous rich stock which is saved in the freezer for next time I want to make soup, or perhaps risotto or even rice and peas again.
- Today we cooked a loaf of chocolate and banana bread. I saved a banana from the other day, which Jaiden had taken one bite from, and decided it was too squishy for his liking. And there was another that had been accidentally opened but not eaten. I also used up some pieces of apple that had been abandoned and I'd stashed in the fridge - I used them to make a quick batch of applesauce, and used that to replace the oil in the recipe, to make it lower in calories. (My adaptations for that recipe - using applesauce instead of oil, wholemeal flour, and putting 100g of chocolate rather than a whole cup full).
- using leftovers for work lunches or dinner. I'll admit this week there was a bit of veg that got abandoned at the back of the fridge, and I had to throw in the food waste because it didn't smell right this morning. But I try to do my best to use it all up in general.
- Making pizzas out of English muffins and bagels. I brought home from work some out of date bread items, and we used them to make pizzas. These just had tomato puree and cheese on top, but sometimes we add other toppings, depending on what we have. I made extra and took some for lunch at work the next day - just zapped them in the microwave for 30 seconds, and ate them along with some salad leaves.
- we've almost run out of cereal, but we still have lots of oats. I plan to persuade my children that they'd like to have porridge or 'cold porridge' aka a bit like muesli, for breakfasts this week. Already they've been eating some cereal we did have that they weren't so keen on - I have a big plastic container, where I pour in different cereals and mix them up, to make the favourites, and perhaps less healthy ones, go further!

Those were all very much food related. What else?
Well, planning activities for work that didn't involve me buying anything special - that saved me and them money. I got my family to collect up all their silver foil from mince pies and chocolate coins over Christmas, and then used them in the messy tray for our space theme week.

Sophia needs an outfit to dress up like an Egyptian at the end of February. As soon as we heard this - last weekend, we went looking in the charity shops to see if we could find anything suitable. This meant we had a few weeks to get it sorted, if we didn't find anything right away. In fact we found a dress and a top, which with a few easy touches, will make a great costume, and we realised today she already owns some sandals which will complete the outfit. I'm hoping to write another post soon about homemade costumes...

Not going shopping or even 'window shopping', aside from that charity shop trip. The less I go in shops, the less money I will spend!

I was able to take part in some market research for a company which is in development stage. It interested me, and I was happy to be involved. I'd have done it for free, to be honest, but I was paid an amount which will come in handy for sure! I'm hoping to share more about them in the future.

I think I'd better end this post here, but hopefully it won't be too long before I post again!
(I'll try!)




*Hat tip to @veryBritishproblemsofficial for the title of this post

Christmas Presents

One of the things I hate about Christmas is the hype and the money spending. We had a wander around The Range the other day. If you don't know it,  it's one of those shops where you can buy anything and everything. Craft stuff, sewing, hardware and building bits, kitchen stuff, furniture, food and more!

We had a wander around looking at things for present ideas for the kids. OK, this may shock people, but while we were there we allowed them to pick something each that they wanted to be their Christmas present. And then we bought them, with them right there with us. And brought them home and put them away. I expect we will get a few little bits and pieces for them that will be a surprise, but right now they both have a big ish item, that they know about, and that cost around £15.
Yes, that's it. £15 is all I spent on each of my children for Christmas.  As I said, we may get a couple of other things, but I very much doubt we will spend much more than £5 or £10 on each of them beyond that initial spend.

We will read books during December about the story of the Christmas nativity (more about that idea in another post, maybe). Each of those books came from the charity shop and cost 20p or 50p. They sit in a basket that cost about a quid, also from the charity shop.
We have a tree we bought last year from tesco, and the box was a bit battered, so it was reduced. I forget what to, but I think it was under ten pounds. We have a bunch of Christmas decorations. There are the ones the kids made, like the angel that sits at the top of the tree. We have a lot that we found in charity shops for a small amount of money.

I bought presents in Sainsburys the other day with some of my nectar card points. I've done the same with amazon cards I earned doing swagbucks and an online market research website.

Other presents we give will be homemade - jams and chutneys, most likely homemade chocolates and maybe biscuits.

I share these facts from our little world, to perhaps inspire, maybe make you stop and think. Perhaps you'll just think that I'm a cheapskate and leave it at that. But I'd like to inspire people to not just think about spending lots of money, not to think that is has to cost the earth. But instead, perhaps Christmas could be something different and something more than that.

31 days - day twelve

The tale of Anna and Gill's apples.

Anna, a friend from school, who I'd reconnected with on Facebook, posted on facebook she had apples from her tree if anyone would like them - she wanted to spread some love and kindness and such like.

I'm a sucker for free stuff, and I thought it would be interesting to see Anna again after all this time (about 17 years on!) so I asked, may I have some?

Anna said, sure, come over, so we did.  JJ loved playing with Anna's son's train set. Anna and I had a lovely time chatting and I definitely plan to see her again.  One person loved and blessed.

I gave some apples to my mummy. Two people loved and blessed.

My neighbour brought round some pears they grew in her garden, I gave her some of Anna's apples.
Three people.

Gill popped round with bags of apples.  I was blessed again.

I asked on facebook if any friends wanted to come eat leftover party food and help me process apples from Anna (and lots from Gill). Good times working and talking together. Three more adults plus three babies/children loved and blessed. And I was blessed again by their help.

In my freezer there are several bags of peeled and chopped apples. I will use them to make jam, cake, and crumbles.  Many more people the apples will be shared with, loved and blessed.

A tale of a bag of apples. Friendships rekindled, friendships strengthened, people fed, people loved, people blessed.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day ten

Present giving - give from what's 'in your hand'

This is about thinking outside the box, not wanting to give a present and immediately running to the shops (or the present box featured yesterday)

There are times that you want to show someone your appreciation, but your budget is already over stretched and sometimes that means you have to let the moment go.  But take stock for a minute what you have.  I don't mean give the shirt off your back, or out of your wardrobe, but that can be appropriate on occasion! I mean think outside the box and use your skills.
One of my favourites is giving jars of jam that we've made (sorry, if I've just spoilt the surprise for anyone expecting a gift from me soon!)
This year we have made jam from plums and apples that grew wild in our area. I've also been given rhubarb, gooseberries and apples from friends, blessing me out of their excess. (if you're my friend and you want to gift me with something like that, then honestly yes, it really does bless me. I don't think, oh they're a cheapskate for giving me that, I think, wow, I'm so lucky that they wanted to share their bounty with me!)

Other ideas
Look in your cupboards, do you have ingredients to bake a cake, cook a meal, share your homemade goodies (like jam/jelly/chutney, biscuits, cookies, cakes)

Share your skills.  Offer to cut a lawn, prune a bush, teach someone an instrument, offer to babysit, give your time.  Time is money.  You don't have to physically spend cold hard dosh to give someone a gift of value.

Give a gift of memories - homemade calendars or photos or pictures, handprints are always good from children cos they (the children) don't stay small forever.  Sew a cross stitch.  Knit a scarf.  Make a mix tape - I guess nowadays that might be an iplayer or YouTube playlist!

Let me know if you've given or are planning to think outside the box with your giving this year.

What else could you do?

31 days of money saving and stuff - day nine

A present box

This is a specified place to put things away to be given as gifts.
Generally people use it in one of two ways (or both)

For specific people presents - it's the January sales and I see something that would be perfect for my sister at a reduced price (sales!) or it's a one off that I'm unlikely to see again.  I buy the present, put it in the box. When it comes to the birthday, I pull out the present and deliver it. Job done.

Just in case presents - A box of potential presents, for a money saver these may be bought reduced or on a bulk offer. I use our present box like this. If I see age appropriate items at reduced prices or on a good offer, I stock up, then when Sophia is given a birthday party invite from someone at school, say, our first port of call is the present box, to see if there's anything suitable to give to the birthday child.  This allows me to take advantage of good deals (we recently gave a friend a whole collection of joke-present bits and pieces which I'd bought when it was on end of range prices. Sophie and JJ could give him a whole collection of fun joke things (like stick on moustaches, fake sick, pretend bugs..) and it didn't cost more than our budget could afford. Of course, you don't have to nly buy reduced things, but I'm mentioning those because that's one of our ways to save money on unexpected expenses - you can't always plan when the next party invite will arrive!

31 days of money saving and stuff - day seven

Get to know your local area.

You may have lived there a few weeks or months, you may have lived there all your life, but I bet you don't even notice half the things around you (again, talking to myself!)

This summer I signed up to start geocaching.  Yes, ideally you need some sort of smart phone of device, and it was the not having one of those which stopped me signing up earlier. But all you have to do is go to the website, set up an account, which takes minutes, download an app (apple and android versions available) and stick in your postcode and start hunting.

The website explains it better than I, so go have a look. You get coordinates that help you find the rough area, then additional hints or clues in the description to find some sort of small box. It can be teeny tiny, or perhaps a film canister size, or a lunch box. There's always a log inside - a piece of paper you sign with your name, whatever username you used to sign up online. Then you additionally log your find on the app or website. That way the ower of the cache can check those who say they've found it on the website, have found it when they look at their paper blog.

Useful tools to help you with geocaching - a pen, a smart phone, tweezers (some of the caches are tiny and you need tweezers to pull out the log).

Let me know what you find/if you get addicted.
As at the 14th September I had logged  21 so far.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day six

Walk instead of taking the car.

You get exercise. You don't spend money on petrol. The world is a better place. Nuff said.

(this is totally a directed reminder to myself as much as anything else)

31 days of money saving and stuff - day five

Steal ideas from other people

Some, ok, most of my money saving tips have come from other people. Most of the posts I've written so far on this subject haven't been original in the slightest.  Other people have said it before, and probably said it better, but hopefully you're still here reading anyway, and not just cos you're related to me (hi mum!)

My family will tell you I've always loved reading household hints and tips books, and absorbing random facts. One I learnt recently (from my sister Bekki's googling, in answer to a question from Hannah) is for those who want to know how much gas is left in their gas canister (say for a gas BBQ or camping stove)
Pour boiling water over it, the area filled with gas will cool immediately as the gas will absorb the best, whereas the empty area will stay hot

But anyway, I've wandered from the point, if I had one?

Feel free to take any of my ideas and implement, but equally feel free to laugh at me and say "really? She does that? What a waste of time!"

Join Facebook groups, read budget blogs, read books from the library or the charity shop (you can even buy them new, but consider collecting points on swagbucks and exchanging them for amazon gift cards and then using those to buy books (referral link included) (bonus tip for today)

Ask me questions. Is there anything you'd like my opinion on, with regards to money saving or anything really, since I threw the word 'stuff' in the title of this series!

I'll try to add some more links to useful resources in the next few posts. But blogger isn't fond of my having more than one link in this post, so I can't currently add them here without something crashing.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day four

Today (well, it was actually during the August bank holiday weekend) we saw an ice cream van.

Classic quote from Sophia "I'm not going to be an ice cream lady (driving an ice cream van). I'm going to be a normal grown up like you, mummy"
A. No offence intended to those who do drive ice cream vans
B. No idea where she got the idea that I'm a normal grown up.

Anyway, we looked at the ice cream van, we admired the picture on the back and the tune it played, and we all agreed (Soph, JJ and I) that we didn't want to buy an ice cream cos we had lollies in our freezer at home. And that was that, no arguments, no complaints (and actually, by the time we got inside, they'd forgotten all about ice cream and didn't even remember to ask for lollies. I also forgot, so it wasn't an intention omission!)
I threw in the comment "we've got lollies in our freezer and they cost less than buying them at the ice cream van" and they both nodded agreement.

I guess I have two points/tips here.
First,  you don't have to do the big spend big treat every time. Don't get me wrong, sure, we've bought from an ice cream van, but as a general rule we don't. I buy cheap lollies or ice pops and we eat those and spend significantly less money

Second, it's ok to tell the kids "no, because that costs a lot of money" or "no, a different option is better value". I could rant about this for ages, and I'm not saying I'm totally right, but I'm so aware of living in an age of entitlement, where kids get everything they want, at the expense of other things. I think it's ok to say no, and explain its for financial reasons. It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom, but it can be in a way that teaches value of money,  (not, woe is me, we can't afford that. But look, if we go for this option, it's cheaper/we save money, and we still feel satisfied)

31 days of money saving and stuff - day three

This tip kind of comes before yesterday's post if you're starting to try to manage your money better
- know your income and outgoings
- have a budget

I'm going to focus on the second today.
We have a budget for household shopping. I have x amount of money for food, cleaning products, loo roll, and pretty much anything I might buy at the supermarket. Yesterday (by which I mean the yesterday to the day i wrote this, not actually october second, see confession in my first post) I bought JJ a packet of Fireman Sam stickers which cost a quid, this came out of my household budget.
It's a fairly realistic budget, as I said yesterday, we recently increased this by ten pounds a week (and now I'm having odds and ends to empty out into my jar at the end of the week, most weeks, so I think it's a slightly generous budget, but allows for the extra I was needing)
But it also does reign me in at times when I might be tempted to splurge for the sake of splurging.

There are a few ways to come up with a budget figure for your household
A. Trial and error. Pick a number and try to stick to it. Yeah, it's a simple method, but can be frustrating until you've got it fixed.

B. Keep your receipts for a few days/weeks/months and do a rough tally of what you're spending and average it for a figure for the week/month, whichever works for you. I do a week, cos I think I'd be in danger of splurging at the start of a month and running out halfway through if I had a months figure in cash in my purse at the start of the month.

C. Make a list of things you buy regularly, and price them. I tend to remember a lot of prices in my head, just because that's the sort of brain I have, but sites like your supermarket online store, or 'my supermarket' is agood site for uk users to compare prices at different stores.
Then use that price list and make a realistic guess how much of each item you need in a week. Do the sums and come up with a total. I'd prob add on five to ten per cent to allow for anything you forgot to put on the list.

D. Use an online budget calculator. I've not got any links at my finger tips, but I'll try to find some later in the month.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day two

My tip for today

Use cash.

Each week we withdraw the shopping budget amount in cash and it goes in my purse. As the money decreases through the week (yeah, I'm one of those shop a few times, not do a big shop sort of girls most times), I start to think "do I actually need to buy this, or is it just a want". We did recently agree to slightly increase the weekly budget as I was regularly getting to day five or six and realising oh, we still need milk/bread/loo roll (the three most bought items in our house, probably) and the money was gone, or nearly gone. But if I'd been buying on the debit card all the time it would be a lot easier to go over budget/not keep track of what I was spending (and I'm talking from past experience)

The other thing I do is when I get the new money (usually crisp notes from the cash machine) I empty anything that is in my purse out into a jar. If I didn't already spend it, I clearly didn't need it that week. If I leave it in my purse, likihood is I will spend it the next week. But if it's out of the purse I can't spend it. Those dribs and drabs add up and can be used for treats, or, ad I often do, to go towards other money needs, like we pay our water bill by having a card scanned at the shop and giving them x amount to add on to our account, so having cash around to do that is a bonus.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day one

I want to see if I can do 31days of posts in October, as many bloggers do. It's a 31 day thing. I think I've tried it before, but not sure if I've made it through.
I've been wanting to write some more posts about money saving and stuff like that, so I thought, hey, let's try to combine the two.

Confession, I'm starting writing posts on the 29th August, in the hope that I might manage to write enough posts by the end of October, but I will set it to auto post for October first. By the time the posts publish, I'll probably have forgotten what I wrote!

Every time I get in the shower I remember this one, and by the time I'm out and dressed, it's forgotten again, so let's see if I can actually blog it this time....
We went camping in the summer and I decanted my shampoo, conditioner and body wash into some of those little travel bottles, they're the ones with the lids that just click up a bit at the side and you squeeze out a bit of liquid. Well, at the time of writing this post, we've been back from camping 3 weeks and I'm still using those little bottles, I've showered almost every day. That's a lot of hair washes from little bottles I originally worried they wouldn't last the week. And then I realised, when I use my big bottles of shampoo etc, they have big holes and when I squirt it out on my hand, a lot comes out, and I just use it, but with the little bottles, you sort of have to apply a bit of force to squeeze the stuff out, and you automatically get a much smaller amount in your hand. But, and here's the important thing, the smaller amount of shampoo is enough to wash my hair. Sometimes I have to add a bit more water as I'm rubbing the shampoo in, to make it sud up and go all over, but it is enough. I'm using a significantly smaller amount at every hair wash, meaning the shampoo is going so much further. That sounds like a money saver to me.

I was going to take a photo of the little bottles, but I haven't, and I just remembered my tablet and blogger were not happy last time I tried to post pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination!

Money

I want to blog about some of the ways I save our family's money and some of the ways I spend it, but I don't want to come across as presumptuous or preaching. Knowing what you know about me (many of you will have seen my reduced meat and veg hauls on Facebook) what would you like me to write about? Give me some questions to answer to get me started!