Tip Of The Day: Wallpaper

Don't throw out those left over pieces of wallpaper. Use them for:

• wrapping presents
• lining drawers
• your children's craftwork
• decoupage
• creative decorating - do have enough for one signature wall or a chimney breast?
• brightening up furniture - you can affix wallpaper to panels in drawer-fronts, for example

Think outside the box and you can save money.

Cheap Haircare Tips

HAIRCARE can be expensive, although I know quite a few men who would love to have that problem. There are ways, however, you can cut the cost - and be kind to the environment too as no chemicals are involved.

Add a red tone to your hair by boiling some ordinary brown onion skins in water. Allow to cool and strain. Add the liquid to your final hair rinse. Leave hair in the solution for a few moments and dry as normal.
The result will not be instant, but should show after using it two or three times.

Get lovely shiny hair by adding one or two tablespoons of vinegar to your final rinse.

Give hair body and shine by pouring beer over your hair after washing it, massage well in and rinse out thoroughly.

Add softness and shine: Dissolve a spoonful of honey into three or four cups of warm water. Once the honey is thoroughly mixed, pour the mixture over wet, freshly washed hair. Gently wring excessive moisture from your hair, but do not rinse the mixture out. Use a towel to lightly pat hair dry and then style as normal.

Go a shade more blonde by using the juice of one lemon, brushing it into your hair and letting it dry in the sun. You can use this method for blonde streaks too.

Keep your hair blonde by brewing two camomile tea teabags or use two tablespoons of camomile tea, strain and add it to your final rinse. Don't expect to see an immediate difference. It will take a few rinses before you notice.

Here's a recipe for a natural hair tonic. Take 1 lb of stinging nettles and bring to boil in one pint of water. Leave to cool, strain. Rub it gently into scalp and shampoo as usual. It prevents dandruff and also hair loss.

Mayonnaise makes a good hair conditioner. Apply it to dry hair, cover with a shower cap, wrap in warm towel and wiat for 20 to 30 minutes. Wash as usual. Conditioner:

Treat dry hair by beating one egg with two tablespoons of olive oil. Smooth the mixture evenly throughout your hair and then cover with a shower cap. Allow the mixture to remain on hair for ten minutes and then rinse thoroughly. The high protein and amino acid content of the egg will add strength and shine to your hair while the olive oil will help to soften and condition dry hair.

Treat oily hair: Mix the juice of two lemons with a quart of water and use for the final rinse.

Frugal Christmas Gifts

EVERY year I battle through crowds in my lunch hour to do my Christmas shopping. Apart from the stress and the expense, there is the worry about finding the right present.

I usually buy gift tokens for the teenage members of my family because what can you buy a young person that won’t necessitate a sharp dig in their ribs and a hissed, "say thank you to Auntie” from their mum?

Not that any of the teenagers in my family resemble Harry Enfield’s monstrous creations Kevin and Perry. They are all perfectly pleasant kids who treat this aunt with bemused tolerance... but their tastes change faster than my better half downs a pint (and that’s Guinness Book of Records standard, I can assure you).

It seems like only yesterday I was buying Lego sets and outfits for Barbie. Now I don't know from one day to the next what's "coo-el" and what isn't. I try to engage them in conversation about a band that yesterday was "totally awesome". Today, any mention of the band's name and eyes roll back into heads as if I had suggested they might quite like to listen to my Vera Lynn’s Greatest Hits album.

So gift tokens it is. I don’t want to be like one aunt in the family who bought Dinky toys for her 15-year-old nephew. I remember wondering how she could do such a thing – now I know. He may be six-foot tall with a six o' clock shadow but in my head he's still that little boy banging nails into a felt-covered pad with a wooden hammer.

Gift tokens apart, I am this year determined to cut my Christmas spending to a minimum. I don’t mind shelling out on my nearest and dearest - I might be frugal but I'm not Scrooge's meaner sister - but I don’t want to get them something that will be shoved in the back of a cupboard and forgotten about.

The following are all presents that should cost under £10. Wrap them or package them imaginatively and they will look twice the price.

1. If you are good at writing, buy a cheap cuddly toy and write a personalised story to go with it.

2. An unusual mug filled with chocolates, sweets or nuts. Or you can be really imaginative and tailor it to the recipient’s interests – nails and screws for a DIY fan, fruit teabags for a tea conoisseur or oil paints for an artist, for example.

3. Mini hamper or serving dish filled with unusual food items.

4. A plant pot filled with gardening items like seeds and plant food.

5. A stationery set. Find the cheapest items you can – ballpoint pens, sticky notes, paper, notebook and put them in a pretty stationery box.

6. A bathroom set with scented soap, a sponge, shampoo, flannel etc.

7. Assemble a sewing set.

8. Basket filled with jams, chutneys and pickles (even cheaper if you’ve made them yourself)

9. A pack of cards and book of card games.

10. Nail polish kit with cotton wool buds, selection of varnishes and remover.

A great idea for the person, or family, who has everything is to buy a charity gift for the developing world in their name. World Vision has a great selection for under £10, including fruit trees, chickens, school textbooks, blankets and mosquito nets.

All you have to do is to pay for the gift online and it will go winging its way to a needy person. A card is sent to the person in whose name the item has been sent.

Do you have any ideas for cheap Christmas gifts? Email me by clicking here

or leave a comment.

Bargain Books

WHAT guilty little addictions do you have? I’m not talking about the big addictions – drugs, sex, rock and roll, 12 pints of Buckfast before breakfast – but the little ones.

Mine is books. I read a review and the next thing I know I’m on the Amazon website and ordering it. My better half shakes his head in bemusement and makes comments like: “Just what we need in this house, another book.”

I have developed the expertise of an alcoholic but instead of a bottle of vodka in the bread bin, it’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. I have The Blind Assassin in my wardrobe, Anna Karenina under my pillow and A Suitable Boy under my bed.

It’s a family thing. We’re forever lugging about carrier bags full of “gear” and whispering things out the sides of our mouths like, “This Bill Bryson came in last night. Grade A. Interested?”

“Yeah, I’ll swap you two Minette Walters, a Ruth Rendell and a P.D. James for the Bryson, an old John Fowles and a Margaret Atwood.”

“Deal.”

I have a house full of books. They have spread from the bookcases, crept under beds, into cupboards, into cardboard boxes in the garden shed and up a ladder into the loft. I daren’t count them and I daren’t tot up how much they have cost me over the years.

I have now resolved to stop buying books – or, at least, stop buying books at their full price.

Here at the North Devon Journal we have our own ‘library’ of books. Various members of staff have donated books and we pay a small fee to borrow one. All the money collected will go to the Guardsman Chris King Memorial Appeal (which supports Help for Heroes and North Devon Army Cadets).

Here are a few more tips to cut down the bills.
1. The obvious answer is to join the library. If you live in the country, check out the mobile library which visits most villages. Don’t incur fines, though; that is defeating the object of cheap reading. These days it’s easy to renew via the internet so there’s no excuse. If you want to read a particular book, you can order it or you can reserve it if it’s being read by someone else.
2. I’ve spent many a happy hour browsing secondhand book shops. But you can also buy used books from charity shops and community events like bring-and-buy and car boot sales.
3. Many book shops and supermarkets have great offers, like three books for £5 or boxed sets.
4. Swap books with friends and family or via the internet. Put the words ‘book swap websites’ into Google and several sites will be mentioned. For example at Green Metropolis you can buy a book for £3.75 but you can get £3 for each one you sell. Amazon Marketplace or eBay are great sites for selling your books.
5. Don’t rush out to buy an expensive hardback book – it will soon be much cheaper in paperback.

Yes, it's time to turn over a new leaf.

Price Check: 10p And Under

I’VE set myself a bit of a challenge this week. I have been compiling the “price check” section for The Register page in the North Devon Journal, searching through supermarkets to find the week’s best bargains.

It’s been an interesting exercise which has changed the way I shop. Now I’m on high alert every time I go shopping. I’m like a bloodhound tracking down escaped convicts, but I’m sniffing out the BOGOFs, the 3 for 2s and the multisaves. I trawl through the supermarket websites to see if there’s any offer that can feed a family of four for a fiver – and still have enough leftovers for the dog and the cat and to make a nourishing soup the following day. (I’m leaving the five loaves, two fishes and a gathering of 5,000 to a higher power.)

Items under a £1 are commonplace so I thought I’d search out a few items for 10p and under. I was only successful on the Tesco and Sainsbury’s websites – but if any other supermarket has similar offers, let me know and I’ll include them in my next post.

The cheapest item I could find was a tin of Tesco Value Curry Sauce (390g) for an eye-watering 4p a tin.

There were some sweet sensations with a Tesco Value packet of strawberry whip (38g) for 6p and the Value and Basics ranges both offering 70g packets of custard powder for 7p. Both had their own brand strawberry jelly (128g) for 7p. Sainsbury’s Basics also included a no added sugar chocolate dessert mix (38g) for 9p.

If all that sweetness makes you fear for your teeth, both supermarkets were offering two toothbrushes for a staggering 10p (yes, just 5p each).

There was a Tesco Value batter mix (128g) for 8p. And if you’re a fan of instant noodles, Tesco Value has a chicken flavour (65g) and Sainsbury’s Basics a curry flavour, both for 9p.

I’d love to hear from anyone who can find an item for 10p or under. Email me by clicking here.

The Folly Of Food Labels

I TAKE no notice of best-before, sell-by or use-by dates, I’m more of a sniff-by kind of a girl. If it doesn’t smell whiffy, it’s edible as far as I’m concerned. Now I’m pleased to hear — and a little surprised — that the Government agrees with me.


Environment secretary Hilary Benn has pointed out the sheer folly of slinging out perfectly good food just because it’s past its best-before date. Note, he's not suggesting that anyone ignores the use-by date, probably not wanting to get sued for an outbreak of botulism. Personally, I trust my own judgement.


My friends and I have different attitudes to that “best before” date-stamp on food. Some religiously throw out anything that has passed its shelf life while others use the date as a guide.


I, however, look on those dates as a challenge. A packet of custard powder that orders me to use it by October 7, 2009? Pah! I’ll make that raspberry trifle when I want to and I may not want to until January 7, 2020.


To me it’s always seemed madness (and somehow immoral) to throw away what is obviously perfectly good food. In fact, as a nation we throw away ONE-THIRD of all the food that we buy. I’ve written about this before here.

Not only is this an incredible waste of money but is environmentally disastrous. I refuse to believe that a tin of beans that is perfectly safe to eat at 11.59pm, suddenly becomes poisonous a minute later. If it were true, Dr Crippen wouldn’t have bothered with the hyoscine hydrobromide to poison his wife, he would have opened a dodgy packet of prawns and made her a sandwich instead. (In the interests of historical accuracy, Crippen TRIED to poison his wife but gave her too much hyoscine hydrobromide — she went screamingly mad and he shot her. Oh well... can’t win ’em all.)

Mr Benn said: “In the past, long before such labels existed, people would look at food in the fridge or larder and decide whether it was OK. Throwing food away costs us money. And if it goes to landfill it produces methane and that adds to the problem of climate change."

Mr Benn also said Britain must produce more food to avert world hunger.

If you look in the back of my cupboards you’ll probably find tins of Carnation milk that my grandmother squirrelled away in the war — the First World War. If bottles of wine from the Napoleonic era can make hundreds of thousands of pounds, my tins of Carnation must be worth a few quid, surely?

I haven’t poisoned anybody yet. At least, I don’t think I have. Which reminds me, I wonder what happened to my old schoolfriend who popped round for a sandwich in 2003? She hasn’t been back since.

Frugal Cleaning

EVERY once in a while the Marigolds and the feather duster come out at my home at Chez Disarray.

And yes, I am talking about spring-cleaning, not some weird practice for which certain men pay good money in Soho.

I do occasionally get caught up in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) because my house needs a good clean and tidy.

It’s then that I am particularly susceptible to all those advertisements on television, convinced that I must spend good money on something that promises me “one squirt and the dirt is gone”. One squirt, ten minutes of scrubbing, nine minutes of swearing and the dirt is gone, would be more accurate.

I have in the past spent a fortune on cleaning products, which admittedly all did a good enough job, before realising that cheaper alternatives are just as effective. So here are a few of my best cheapo cleaning tips:

1. A teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda on a damp cloth works as well as expensive cream cleaners.

2. Use vinegar for cleaning glass. It cuts through grease brilliantly. Use half vinegar and half water in an old spray bottle, put in a jar and dip in a clean cloth.

3. Essential oils are great for general cleaning too and very economical as you need so little. A couple of drops of tea tree oil on a damp cloth will disinfect surfaces.

4. Forget the proprietary clothes whiteners . Add a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to your washing powder. Incidentally, you can cut down on the recommended amount of soap powder - at least by half if your clothes are grubby rather than dirty.

5. Here’s a great (and cheap) carpet stain remover: Mix white vinegar and baking soda together to form a paste. Then, work the paste into the carpet stain with an old toothbrush, or something similar. Allow the paste to dry; then vacuum up the baking soda, and the stain should be gone. Some stains may need to be treated more than once.

6. Vinegar comes into its own again in the loo. Pour a couple cups of vinegar into the toilet before bed, swish it with a toilet brush in the morning, and flush. This will sanitise your toilet and remove stubborn hard water stains.

7. And it’s vinegar again for the microwave. Fill a microwave-safe bowl with a mixture of half vinegar and half water, and put in on high for two minutes. Then, dip a sponge into the vinegar-water (be careful it’s not too hot) solution, and use it to wipe the food off of the walls of the microwave. It’ll wipe away easily.

8. Lemon juice is great for cleaning brass and copper. Mix to a paste with baking soda and rub on. Clean off and polish with a dry cloth.

9. The best tip, of course, is never to let anything get too dirty or stained in the first place. Then you will need minimal products and elbow grease to get everything clean and sparkling again.

If you have any cleaning tips you want to share, leave a comment or email me by clicking here.