They’re convenient, cheap to start with – and terribly expensive to continue to use. Unless you get the starter kit and make your own daily shower cleaner.

Daily Shower Cleaner Recipe

• Pour water in your bottle, leaving about 1 cup free.
  • Doing it this way prevents having tons of bubbles that you have to wait for to settle!
• Add about 1 cup of rubbing alcohol ($1 at dollar stores)
• 1/2 tablespoon of dish detergent
• 2 tablespoons of rinse agent

You can use this mixture to refill the automatic shower cleaner bottles or use it to fill a spray bottle.

How To Refill An Automatic Shower Cleaner Bottle

These bottles have a special cap that makes it harder – but not impossible – to open.

• keep twisting (you’ll hear click click sounds as it touches the “lock”) until the cap comes off
• refill your automatic shower cleaner with the shower cleaner recipe from above
• twist the cap back on
• most important part:
  • hold the bottle upright (cap point upwards)
  • put the holder over the bottle and push
  • slowly turn the holder & bottle upside down (do it over the sink)

Hang it in the shower and you’re done.

If your automatic shower cleaner doesn’t work after refilling, take the bottle out, dry the holder and wait a bit. Then put it back in like I wrote above. When the automatic daily shower cleaner machine doesn’t work it’s usually because too much of the liquid poured out.

Estimated yearly saving per household: $80-$100

Why aren’t mop heads interchangeable?

A mop is basically something you buy once, either for years or for the rest of your life. Marketers figured that doesn’t earn them enough money. So they started to develop mops that you need to replace. Regularly. Often. A lot. At a price.

Instead of thick strands of cotton they use cheaper, thinner fabric. The fabric wears out or lets lose and in the end you have to buy another mop head. We call this built-in obsolence: when something is made with the idea in mind that you have to buy another one or something else because what you paid for has become automatically obsolete.

Sponge head mops are even worse. They wear out even faster.

But as the screwheads of these mop handles all use a standard fit — pretty much like lamps or paint roller handles all have the same fit — you could still buy another brand and use that.

Manufacturers didn’t like that at all and so, in order to continue to make tons of money from a roduct that lastet your grandmother half her life, they changed the fit of the screw wire. Wow.

How to get a cheap mop

Now you do want a mop with a replaceable head; they’re easy to wash and maintain. I have a bunch of mopheads as I clean up after animals and I love being able to take off the head, pop it in the laundry and meanwhile screw on another — clean — mop head.

If that’s not that important to you and you don’t mind a bit of work and soaking, then you cn buy an old fashioned mop: wooden stick with mop permanently attached to it.

If you want to go for the replaceable kind, go to a dollar store. In the household aisles they will sell sticks or handles. Usually these are made from black plastic.

Next to them you’ll find broom heads and mop heads. Buy a couple of mop heads and you’re done.

If you absolutely want a brand mop handle, pick up one of these cheap dollar store mop heads. They have the standard fit. Take it with you when you go shopping for a brand mop handle. Try if the cheap standard size fit mop head fits on the mop handle you want to buy and only buy a handle that can accept standard fit mop heads.

What it will save you

Brand mop head exclusive to their fit are between 5-10 dollar. Expect to buy 2 of them per year with regular use. That’s 10-20 dollar per year. The same replacements from the dollar store will be 1-2 dollar or 2-4 per year. That’s a cash saving of 16-18 dollar in your pocket. In just one

Figuring out the lowest price is what you do with your price book where you write down when which products you use come on sale and what they cost then. This allows you to see the sales cycles and know when a special really is, you know, special.

How Much To Buy For Your Pantry

Now that you know what to buy when, we’re going to figure out how much.

Knowing how much to buy of something on special is important because you don’t want to end up with a pantry with 20 pots of peanut butter only.

How much to buy of a product on sale is a simple division of time between sales divided by time it takes you to consume a product.

Our price book took care of the first part of that calculation; figuring out your consumption, your actual grocery usage, is what we take care of today.

Tracking Your Grocery Consumption

Tracking your grocery usage can be as simple as tracking sales. A piece of paper or a spreadsheet, a text file, an email where you make notes: whatever works for you.

It’s quick too; usually you’ll have enough information to start making informed purchases within 4-8 weeks.

Next time you open a grocery item at home, take a permanent marker and note the date on the bottom, top or side. Sure, you can write the open date right away on it but experience shows that this usually doesn’t happen in the heat of the moment. So just mark it.

Once the item is done, count how many days it lasted. Write down on in your consumption book: product (brand name is not important), size or quantity, and how many days it lasted.

You can make this information as detailed as you want. Using a calculator you can divide the size or quantity by the number of days, giving you the average consumption per day.

Let’s take an 18oz (500 gram) pot of peanut butter, for example. We open it on the 3rd of September. It’s finished by the 16th of September. 16-2 is 14: that pot lasted 14 days.

Using Your Grocery Information

In your store flyer you see that 18oz (500 gram) pots of peanut butter are on loss leader special (advertised at the front page or back page of the flyer). They’re going to be $1.29 each.

You have your price book with you and you check; yes, this is indeed one of the lowest prices. Looking at the dates in your price book you also see that the next time they’ll be about this cheap is in 4 months.

So how many pots of peanut butter should you buy on special sale to make sure you a) earn yourself big bucks as you cut your grocery spending in half, b) don’t buy too many and don’t have pantry place for other items on sale, and c) don’t buy too less so that you would be forced to start buying at full price before the next sales?

It took you 14 days or 2 weeks to finish 1 pot of peanut butter. Months are roughly 4 weeks so you go through 2 pots of peanut butter per month.

In your price book you saw the next special is in 4 months. 4 months times 2 pots per month = 8 pots.

Check Your Pantry Before You Buy

That you’re going to eat 8 pots over the coming 4 months doesn’t mean right away you should buy 8 pots.

First, check in your pantry (or better: check your pantry list). Subtract the amount of pots you already have there from the total you would need.

So, if you need 8 pots for 4 months and you already have 3 in your pantry, you only need to buy 5 more.

I like to have a little bit of wiggle room. Sometimes the next sales is a bit later than what you thought. Or you go a bit faster through your groceries than you thought.

That means that in the case of the peanut butter grocery sale I would buy 6-8 pots so that together with what I have in the pantry I would have 9-11 pots. More than enough.

Summary

• Track the loss leader prices from 1 or 2 of your favorite supermarkets
  • Write down the date, product, price, and quantity or size
• Note when you open a new grocery item and when you’re finish with it;
  • write down the product, size or quantity, and how many days it lasted you
• Use the information to calculate how many of an item on sale you should buy to make it to the next sale

Following this system you’ll never pay full price again!

That would be pretty amazing and sort of a God-send, wouldn’t it?

By giving yourself a slow but steady head start you can save fifty percent and more on your groceries.

BUY LOSS LEADERS

Every week the supermarkets in your area offer absolute stunt prices. They sell items for half price one way or the other.

Either it’s a straightforward 50% off or it’s buy one, get one free (also advertised as two for the price of one).

START YOUR PANTRY STOCKPILE WITH 50% OFF OFFERS

Your challenge is three-fold:

1. to incorporate as many of these cheap items in this week’s menu as possible

2. to buy as many extra’s as you can afford of those items that are 50% and that you would normally use.

3. to write down the date, product and price

Within weeks you’ll start to notice that instead of buying an item at full price, you grab the 50% off version you have in your pantry stockpile.

REPEAT THE BUYING CYCLE

You’ll also start to see that what seemed to be random offers are in fact waves or cycles of offers. Certain items or brands come on special every X amount of weeks or months.

Because you write down these offers you can see which items are on what cycle.

That helps you figure out how many of a special offer you should buy. If canned vegetables come on special every 8 weeks and you use about 10 cans in an 8 week period, you now know how many you need in your pantry to make it from one offer to the next and never ever have to pay full price again.

WHERE TO FIND LOSS LEADERS

Loss leaders are most prominently advertised on the front page of a store’s flyer. Some appear at the back.

Inner pages of the flyer show items at their regular price, at tiny or fractional saving or at fake special prices (raised one week before to claim a lower price now).

Only buy the loss leader items. Don’t waste your time, energy and money on the other stuff.

Be warned that supermarkets will place specials together so that when you grab the loss leader you look up and think “Oh, maybe I should buy that too!”

Loss leaders are based on this idea; they are funded by all the extra stuff we buy when we pick tem up.

Make a deal with yourself and get only the lossleaders. If this seems not possible, set aside one day or one trip to the supermarket to buy just the loss leaders.

ONE STORE OR MANY?

If you apply the above principle to two or more supermarkets you obviously have more loss leaders, more money in your pocket. More to track too.

Be careful though: don’t let this cost time (or too much extra money to drive around). Ideally these stores are as close by as possible; walking distance would be best.

We generally keep an eye on the flyers of two supermarkets that are close by here. We could easily expand it to 3 or 4 but I’d have to track the prices of that many more stores, walk further. In general I haven’t found it worth it.

So, stick to one supermarket, maybe two.

Here are realistic, actionable tips on how to save money on household products during a recession.

Reduce What You Use & Improve

We lived in an era where every part of the house gets its own cleaner and every action gets its own tool. Did you see our grandma clean like that?

• Paper towel is pretty useless. Convenient, maybe. But this is paper money you mop up some spilled coffee with … and then throw away. Helloooo!!! Instead, cut up some old T-shirts into rags you can use. Swish up anything on the counter, quickly rinse & squeeze and you’re ready for the next spill.
  Don’t like the idea of rinse & squeeze? Make a pile of these rags and use them like paper towel but instead of throwing them away, pitch them in your laundry basket.
• Dedicated cleaning materials are a way to make you buy the same product multiple times by convincing you cleaning the kitchen counter and cleaning the bathroom need two different cleaners.
  Two easy, cheap and tremendously effective cleaners are vinegar (which disinfects almost as good as using pure bleach but without the stains!) and … dishwashing liquid.
  That’s right: dishwashing liquid. It’s made to cut through grease and grime – it usually even says so on the bottle! What better to use to clean your food stained kitchen counters than the very product we use to wash the dishes with the same food stains? Afraid it doesn’t disinfect? One; and yet you eat from your plates? Two: get one that specifically says “anti-bacterial” on the label.
  You can buy dishwashing liquid in huge bottles. Get a spray bottle from a dollar store. Pour in almost completely full with water, then add about 2-3 tablespoons of dishwashing liquid. Shake: ready to go.
  Use this trusty duo – vinegar and dishwashing liquid – wherever you would use other cleaning products.
• Refills are crack cocaine for households. They sell the starter kit of whatever it is for next to nothing and then you keep on handing over your good money to total strangers for the rest of your life. No more.
  The “easy clean” bathroom hangers? Make a do it yourself solution instead for dimes and save up to $100 per year. Or: get the cheaper spray bottles you have to use manually and use that instead. Or: while taking a shower, wipe down the walls. Or: clean the old fashioned way (once a week) using the cleaners mentioned above.
  Nice odors like Glade and what not? Buy essential oils. A bottle will last you half a life time. Or: buy cheap fabric softener sheets and place them around the house.
• Mops, dusters and what not; if it is an item it should be reusable. It is insane to buy sheets for a “mop” or dust your house with a tool you have to buy refills for (see above). Buy a regular, cheap map. Don’t go for the old fashioned wooden ones; you can’t really wash them Get one with a replaceable head. Be warned!!! Don’t get locked in. Many replaceable head mops nowadays are very very expensive and meant to be changed a lot. Go to the store, grab a cheap wirey mop head and try it on several sticks. Buy the one that fits.
  Tip: many dollar stores sell mop heads for a dollar and they sell sticks to put them on. Also a dollar.
  Dust your house with old rags or used fabric softener sheets.
• Vacuum cleaners have become a special kind of evil. They often need multiple dedicated and expensive changes and refills. When shopping for a vacuum cleaner make sure it doesn’t need a dust bag. Many new vacuum cleaners require special filters; check the price. Buy two or three right away so you’re ready for coming years. Look well: is this something you could easily take out and rinse or soak to make it last longer?
  If you can’t replace your vacuum cleaner right now, try to reuse. Shake your dust bag in the trashcan but don’t throw it away. Use used fabric softener sheets to replace the air filter sheets with.

Image credit: Kevin McShane

No matter if you track your spending over a short amount of time, say one or two weeks, or keep on doing it for years, tracking what you spend can save you hundreds of dollars.

If you’re on the road to make your money last longer, to stretch one pay into two, you’ve already visited some well known techniques. You’re going into the grocery store with a list. You know your fixed bills, have shopped for the best deals on them and pay them on time.

You know where your money is going.

But do you know where you’re spending? If you have set yourself a $100/week budget – do you know where and how you’re spending that? Are you leaving money on the table?

By tracking your spending habits you can learn where you might be spending more than make sense. Or which low-ticket items have a big pay off for you and your family. Those 3 bottles of pop every week are just a buck a piece … just 3 dollar a week… but when you see your tracked spending adding up to $12/month and see how much more value you’re getting from basic food (think pasta!), you know where you should stop…

Eating cheaper doesn’t need to be very complicated and Jakob from Early Retirement Extreme, one of my favorite frugal bloggers, featured what I think is a brilliant frugal meal: the one dollar Pinto bean based Sloppy Joe.

The only things you really need are pinto beans, fried onion, can of tomato paste.

Leaving out the optional parts changes the taste but does not affect the general idea.

Fry the onions in a pan. Add the rest except the beans. Stir. Now add the beans. You’re done.

You can serve it on bread with lettuce, tomatos, olives, etc. or with rice and pasta. All these options create a balanced amino acid profile.

Great, solid meal.

Sloppy joe pinto beans one dollar meal

Just to keep a tight budget and watch the money.

That also means that she has to find ways to have fun with her kids without spending too much money; preferably without spending any money at all.

One of her excellent ideas is to cook together.

Cook together. We spend time together preparing dinner in the evenings. This is one of the ways I try to spend time and simultaneously educate my children (they should be young men who can cook!). It’s always hectic when we first come home, so I find that giving everyone a task helps them to feel involved, and also makes them more likely to enjoy dinner. ;) My oldest can prepare food on the stove (with guidance), and my younger sons (7 and 5) can help stir, pour, and pat (they have a personal fascination with bread dough). Younger children can “play along” on the floor with a pot and spoon. It’s also a good idea to eat together. No, this doesn’t happen every night in my household – but I try to do it when we can.

Initially this might sound like a lot of pain. “I will get slowed down” or “it will be a constant struggle to have them prepare something sane.”

The good parts are of course that your children will grow up learning how to make their own food. This will make them better partners in relation, teach them healthy eating habits and learn them the value of money.

Also, everyone will have a specific task to perform precisely at your busiest time; this will really help with all those strange interruptions…

Researchers at Columbia University studied how this cooking pattern affects a child’s eating habits.

They found that those who cook their own food or participated in making the meal were more likely to ask for similar healthy food in their school cafeteria. They also found that children were difficult teachers started to ask for second servings.
Finally, they were also more willing than other children to try different foods.

Frugal Fun with Children [via Smart Spending]
See also: 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make and Rachael Ray Wants Kids in the Kitchen

Let’s name just two “basic” ones: a land line (regular telephone line) and the mobile phone. Right area are talking about an absolute minimum of $40-$80 and more a month. I remember, this is basic stuff; no voice mail, caller ID, etc. etc.

In order to save money on your technology bills you don’t need to go without any technology either. But you might want to prune and be selective with the ones that you have and keep.

Here’s some advice from Kevin Brand, EarthLink’s SVP of product marketing.

Assess your Needs.

Downgrade: Once you assess your needs, get rid of services that you aren’t fully using.

Avoid Bundles: Advertisers may create a “need” that might not really exist for you. If you’re a cost- conscious consumer, look closely at how much you’re paying for popular, but often pricey, bundle packages that include phone, cable and Internet. It may be easier to pay all-on-one bill, but it doesn’t allow you the flexibility to choose the best individual services that fit your lifestyle.

Study your Bill: Read the small print. Know what you are paying for and make sure you’re only paying for services that you actually use.

I left some of Kevin’s advice out; shopping around for freebies and “paying smart” by taking advantage of special deals and incentives in my opinion gets people to move their services around a lot, whereas a steady regular bill is much easier to maintain.

My own experience is that an Internet subscription gives the best dollar for dollar value. Especially in the USA there is a lot of free online television featuring complete episodes, even complete movies. You can rent movies over the Internet, watch them on deamnd, and even download them (legally!).
You have access to tons of reading material, tons of entertainment, games, e-books, “social” contact and so forth.

For a couple of bucks you can even have telephone online, including an incoming regular telephone number (Skype).

To me that means that, especially in times of need, you can easily let go of your telephone and Cable television subscription.

How to Save Money on Your Monthly Technology Bills

Typically an emergency fund is considered to be three to six months of the regular expenses. Always expenses we mean the stuff you have to pay: rent, electricity, some groceries, etc. etc.

For example, if your regular expenses add up to $2000 per month, and cutting away all the extras would put you at the bare minimum of $1500 per month, the unique $4500 a year emergency funds to survive three months without income.

However, says “Blunt Money”, it’s a much more realistic idea to keep more than the bare minimum in your emergency fund.

I keep thinking that more income was right around the corner, but it wasn’t. I knew intellectually that I should cut back to the bare minimum, but knowing something intellectually and actually doing it are two completely different things. [...]

It’s just not realistic to think that if you lose your job, you’re going to instantly cancel your cable & cell phone, stop eating out entirely, quit driving places so that you use less gas, tell your kid no they can’t have money for pizza or the field trip at school, deny yourself an ice cream cone when you’re sitting at home going stir crazy, etc.

Don’t let the suggested size of emergency funds discourage you from starting one. Having two dollars on the side (Tobiah breadwinners nothing to eat…) is better than nothing. When there is actually no money in the house anymore, $10 can be stretched into a week of food. And as long as you’re putting away money in that emergency fund and don’t need to touch it, it keeps growing and eventually will match one paycheck, then to, then three; no matter how long it takes.

“Frugal Dad” has six ways to raise emergency cash. Again, most of this goes beyond the kind of stuff we talk about on this website: selling stock, Roth IRA, etc. etc.

There is one valuable, useful tip for all of us though: make (some) money selling things.

Sell something, or a lot of things. If you are in a real crunch for cash, consider selling whatever you can get your hands on. Have a yard sale for low-value, high quantity items such as small toys, gently used clothing, etc. Advertise larger items such as furniture on Craigslist, and sell smaller items such as DVDs and books at eBay.

You may also consider pawning jewelry, particularly gold, because as the dollar continues to weaken gold prices should trend upward. This is not an excuse to run out and buy gold, but if you have gold pieces or gold jewelry on hand, and need emergency cash, it could be a valuable trade.

Whatever you do, whenever money arrives in your household, put a part of it away.

Why I keep more than the bare minimum in my emergency fund
Six Ways to Raise Emergency Cash