Get A Free Hippo - And Save Water

MY colleague Adam emailed me to say he had switched to a water meter in October and since then his water bill had halved.

He wrote: “We are two adults and a baby, so not huge water users, but we do throw the boy in a bath every now and then and hose down the worst of it.”

He also admitted to having "a strange selection" of plants which required water – but that his car was rather a stranger to the wet stuff.

As Adam says, this is a handy tip for the water-savvy reader.

His email prompted me to look into the whole water-saving business. Top of the list seems to be to switch to a meter, if you don’t already have one. It may not be economic if you have a large family of water-guzzling little tikes but for most people it will save money.

Our water comes from rivers and groundwater so every drop we use has a direct effect on the environment. Limiting our intake makes sense not only financially but environmentally too.

There’s lots you can do to save water. I’ve trawled the internet on your behalf and the following are the top tips.

* Put a displacement device like a ‘hippo’ in your toilet cistern. If you don’t know what a water hippo is or want more information, click here. You can get a free hippo and free 24-page water conservation advice booklet from South West Water – click here.

* Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth. Leaving it on can waste up to 5 litres of water per minute.

* Always run washing machines and dishwashers with a full load and on the economy setting

* Fix dripping taps; they can waste up to four litres of water a day.

* Use a bowl of water to wash fruit and vegetables. Leftover water can be used for watering plants.

* Use the minimum amount of water required when you boil water in saucepans and kettles.

* Wait until you have a full load before switching the washing-machine or dishwasher. Some have a ‘half load’ setting but these use more than half the normal amount of water.

* A 5-minute shower uses about a third of the water of a bath. But power showers can use more water than a bath in less than 5 minutes.
* Burst water pipes can cause serious damage as well as waste water. Ensure your water pipes and external taps are lagged in time for the cold winter months.

Here some water-saving tips for outdoors which are straight from gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh:

* Water your garden in the cool of the early morning or evening. This will reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation.

* If you water plants and shrubs too often their roots will remain shallow, weakening the plant. Leave them alone until they show signs of wilting.
Collect rainwater in water-butts and use a watering can instead of a hose. If you prefer to use a hosepipe, fit a trigger nozzle to control the flow.
Regularly weed and hoe your garden, to ensure that watering helps plants and not weeds.

* Plant flowers and shrubs that thrive in hot and dry conditions such as thyme, evening primrose, rock rose, Californian poppy, pinks, lavender, buddleia and hebes.
Mulches such as wood chips, bark and gravel help to prevent water evaporation and also suppress weed growth, saving you both water and time spent weeding.

* Lawns can survive long periods of dry weather if the grass is not cut too short. Even if the grass turns brown, it will quickly recover after a few days of rain.
Garden sprinklers can use as much water in an hour as a family of four uses in a day. If you use a sprinkler, many water companies require you to have a water meter fitted.

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

Tips of the day

Bizarre tip of the day:

Always reverse into parking spaces. Tim Shallcross, of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, says drivers can save 40p a day by doing this. Beginning a trip by reversing out of a parking space burns up more fuel because a cold engine uses more petrol than a hot one. When a driver parks he probably has to do a few manoeuvres. “It’s much better to do that with a warm engine using thimblefuls of fuel rather than a cold engine using bucketloads,” he says.

Sensible tip of the day:

Instead of using expensive cream cleaners use a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda on a damp cloth - it works just as well.

Picture: Advanced motorist Mike Hill reverses into a parking space.

Tips of the Day

Bizarre tip of the day:
If you have to take your kids to the supermarket with you, play Bargain Hunt. Give them a list of items you need and the one who finds the cheapest wins. They won’t want dearer branded items and it will keep the little dears, with their incessant “I want….”, out of your hair while you shop. Prizes? Are you kidding – the glory of winning is enough!

Sensible tip of the day:
This is a great tip which was left by “anonymous” on a previous posting: Every time you dial an 0870, 0871, 0844 or 0845 number, you're paying money to big corporations like British Gas, the DVLA, TV Licensing and Barclays. Consumer group Which? says the DVLA made £3.4million from its 0870 line last year. This means we've all been paying for the privilege of making a complaint or getting something fixed. Visit http://www.saynoto0870.com/ . This site lists well-known firms and their geographical numbers. For instance, if you have a licence enquiry, the DVLA wants you to ring 0870 2400009 - but you can call 01792 782341 and avoid the rip-off charges.

Frugal Children's Parties

IF you need to save money, make one of your New Year’s resolutions to spend less on children’s parties.

It seems that these days mums try to outdo each other with the lavishness of their entertainment and party bags. Do you really need to hire a clown or a magician? Or spend hundreds on holding a party in a fast food restaurant? Do you need to spend more on gifts for the little dears to take home than the Gross National Product of a small country? No, of course not.

When I was a child (admittedly many moons ago), there were parties with musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey and pass the parcel with a birthday tea of cheap jelly and icecream. Guests brought presents; they weren’t sent home with bags packed with the contents of Toys R Us.

Birthdays are supposed to be special but ‘special’ needn’t mean expensive. You will find that scaling back on celebrations will make them better - certainly less stressful - by putting the focus back where it was supposed to be all along, on the children. You don’t need cash – you just need a little imagination.

One of my friends cut costs drastically by holding a Fairy Party for her six-year-old daughter. All the guests came dressed as fairies - there would have been elves too if her daughter had wanted any boys at the party. The food was lots of tiny little nibbles – “fairy food” - including little open sandwiches the size of a 50p coin, miniature sausages cut into three, individual swiss rolls cut into even tinier rolls and little dishes of dolly mixtures and miniature marsh mallows.

There were tiny carrot and celery sticks with dip (served in little receptacles like screw top lids) and plates of fruit chopped into small pieces served with chocolate dip. There were individual birthday cakes - those individual sponge rolls cut up and iced, each with its own candle. The little people all ate daintily and loved the food.

They played “fairy” games with prizes of tiny trophies – cheap egg cups decorated with sparkly bits. The most popular game was one she made up herself called Fairy Forfeits. She bought a packet of chocolate buttons and carved a number on each sweet. She then made a pack of cards. The cards had a number on one side and a Fairy Forfeit on the other. The children took it in turns to pick a button (which they then ate), selected the card with the same number on it and turned it over to read what they had to do – some had to do a fairy dance, some had to make up a fairy song, some had to cast a nice fairy spell.

My friend also choreographed a fairy dance, which they all learned and performed for the adults present. When they went home they each took a cheap plastic wand which she had decorated with ribbons. She reckoned the whole party, including the food, hadn’t cost much more than a tenner – and the children absolutely loved it.

Another friend with a 13-year-old son was filled with trepidation after her experiences at a young teenage boy’s party where the little dears had run riot, throwing food around, yelling and racing about and fighting over who had won the games with their expensive prizes. The poor host was hoarse by the end of the day and had a mountain of debris to clear up. She had a laid on a lavish tea which had cost a fortune, and most ended up ground into the carpet.

No way, am I going through that, my friend thought. She sent all the boys out into the garden and served them hot dogs and beef burgers. The birthday boy had been given an action film DVD as a present which they all settled down to watch after the food with mum bringing round popcorn and ice creams during the “interval”. That was all they did – and there wasn’t one murmur of complaint.

If you have teenage children, take a look at cheap hotel deals. They will love a weekend away where they can make use of hotel facilities like a gym , sauna and tennis courts. You might be surprised at how reasonable the rates are, especially out of season. The North Devon Journal’s Reader Holidays often include a real bargain. Keep a look-out too for holiday coupons in newspapers – one national paper was recently offering very cheap breaks in a Cornish holiday park.

Or have a dressing up party with mum’s dresses and high heels or dad’s T-shirts and big shoes. You could buy some hats in a charity shop or be lucky enough to find some children’s fancy dress costumes. Provide cheap make-up (the boys could use eyeliner pencil to create stubble) and jewellery and old watches and they’re set for hours of fun.

One variation on this is to have lots of strange items in a big bag. The children take it in turns to pick an item (without looking) and have to wear it. They keep picking until all the items are gone. Mum or dad then acts as official photographer to take their pictures with a digital camera and print the results out for them to take home.

Be sensible with the goodie bags. Buy plain bags and decorate them yourself – getting your children to decorate them is even better. For young children you can print off colouring sheets from various children’s activity websites. Pop those in with some cheap crayons. Buy a family bag of cheap sweets and share them out. Have a “themed” goodie bag, like The Cake Shop, which is filled with cheap cakes. Or start a trend and dispense with them altogether. I’m sure the other parents will be thrilled.

My own birthday parties were great. I was born in June so the weather was nearly always good. My mother couldn't be bothered with all that party game stuff; she sent us out to play. I was a farmer's daughter and a health and safety inspector would have had a fit as we climbed over the farmyard machinery with its spikes and blades honed to razor sharpness, clambered to the top of precarious piles of straw bales and made dens in animal pens that no doubt harboured virulent strains of e-coli, salmonella and brucellosis. I'll say one thing for my mother, though, she might have subjected us to the risk of amputation, suffocation and respiratory failure but she did produce a very fine birthday tea....