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!

Eat your way to lovely, strong nails with blancmange!

If biting your nails is a problem, start growing them from the inside out, with this easy coffee blancmange recipe! All you need is:

One x 400g can coconut milk or cream. 2 tbsp gelatin 2 tsp coffee 1/4 cup hot water Sweetener of your choice, e.g. sugar, stevia or artificial sweetener

Stir the gelatin into the hot water and mix well.
In a separate bowl, put in the coffee and sweetener of your choice and stir, then tip in the can of coconut milk or cream. Pour in the hot gelatin mixture and stir all together well. Refrigerate for one hour.

The result? Delicious, smooth coffee blancmange, with the health benefits of coconut, and gelatin for nail growth!

How to save $3000 a year on groceries

Here's how we saved $3160 on our food and grocery shopping in one year!

With two kids, it's difficult to find time to shop every week, so I now plan a month's meals in advance and do one big shop each month for basics and weekly shops for fruit, vegetables and meat.

We used to spend $150 a week ($7800 a year) shopping, then find we were throwing away fruit and vegetables because they had gone bad, and that we never had enough ingredients in the house for a full meal. We now spend a total of $170 a month grocery shopping, and $50 a week on fruit, vegetables and meat, if that. This equates to a yearly total of $4640 - a saving of at least $3160!

Planning the month's menu takes a maximum of 20 minutes, and each week we have two fish meals, two meat meals and three vegetarian. Recipes come from 'The Destitute Gourmet Cookbook', the Safeway magazine, magazines from the library and from friends. Each week has a mix of easy/quick recipes and more involved ones so that if I have a busy day, I can make something quick. I also plan the 'snacks' such as oat cake, date loaf and banana muffins.

I have a spreadsheet on the computer which helps me to plan how much pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, and so on I need (four kilograms of rice, five packets of pasta, and so on).

After planning the menu, I write the shopping list and then hit NQR, Safeway and Coles while my husband looks after the kids. It takes only an hour if you're organised with a list and go at a quiet time of day! I prepare separate lists for the weekly fruit, vegetable and meat needs.

We are all now eating in a healthy way and always have cakes and biscuits on hand for guests - and we always use what we have before it goes off.

Other advantages are that other people can consult the menu to see what to cook if I'm not around. Because I'm only doing one big shop, I'm not buying as many impulse items - especially since the husband and kids stay at home! We're also finding that we have enough leftovers from one meal to last another, even after using some for lunches.
And we don't live on baked beans! Tonight we feasted on vegetarian sushi with pickled ginger and Asian dips. Last night was a Moroccan chicken casserole with couscous. Tomorrow night may be a tuna curry, home-made vegetable pizza or grilled balsamic lamb salad!

Doing this, we're saving more than $3000 a year for the family - and don't have the stress of shopping each week with two active children!

Oven cleaning made easy

I wanted to share this excellent method for cleaning your oven.
 
Heat your oven to 250C and place two casserole dishes filled with water on each oven rung. Leave for one hour, ensuring the casserole dishes do not boil dry. Turn oven off, remove dishes and let the oven cool for a few minutes. Remove rungs, then wipe oven clean with a soft cloth. The rungs may need a light rub with a Scotchbrite cloth.
 
The new cloth I used was black in no time but my oven was sparkling clean without the use of chemicals, and only for the cost of heating the oven! An impending visit from the oven repair man motivated me to clean the oven. He commented on how sparkling clean it was – he even wrote down the cleaning instructions!