Evening Out

So my spending this week went up as I did a Social Thing™ and met up with an old work acquaintance for well-overdue drinks. £25 was gone before I could blink. On the plus side, I didn't really know most of the group and wasn't feeling massively into late night shenanigans, so I did manage to go home around pumpkin hour rather than dancing the night away (and spending the night away).

Much as it's nice to catch up with people, I think I'd rather sit and chat with a drink than to boogie to loud music where you can't hear conversation!

Yet another week has gone by without me either shopping properly or cooking proper meals. I need to get my act together and accept that when I'm working the afternoon and evening, I'll have to arrange my proper main meal for lunch. I've done way too much of supermarket sandwiches and snack foods and far too little of fruit and vegetables, and it shows. And it's not cheap. My skin and energy levels are in poor shape and I need to pay attention to my health.

So starting from now I'm stepping down from the supervision role and downgrading myself to just a cleaner. I realised that I was switched on to work from sunrise to sunset, I was missing out on sleep, and I certainly wasn't getting paid for all the "thinking" time in between tasks. I can already see that there will be enough work available for me and now my only responsibilities will be to show up on time and get things clean :)

Spendy McSpenderson: £1.50 on car air fresheners, which must rate among the biggest wastes of money on the planet. I think I hated the work van so much and missed my little car so much that I got a bit emotional about sitting down in Pugsley again - especially after having worked 12 days straight in the company vehicle. I have resolved that when the little hanging leaves stop smelling nice, I won't buy more, but will just attack them with one of my cheap perfumes.

Slight win: Brought home a bunch of "old" cleaning products which the company no longer uses (due to a product range change). They're likely to last years. Somehow I stopped myself bringing home 20L of "light duty cleaner" concentrate that is probably destined for the dumpster.

How To Lower Your Energy Bills?

This is something I kind of do on autopilot now, for safety reasons - but I saw it as a tip on another site and realised that it's also something that can save us money.

Do you know which kitchen appliance in the average home uses the most power - the microwave, the stove top, the oven, or the kettle?

If you're like most people you probably said the oven, or the stove top. If you think microwaves contain space lasers, you might have said it's the nuke machine. But no. It's the humble kettle, and it accounts for 6% of a typical home's power use in the UK.

Now there's a lot of things I'll give up to save money, and a cuppa is not one of them. But it turns out most of us still waste energy with the kettle simply by overfilling it. I have noticed a lot of office environments seem to fill the kettle to the brim before use, which sort of makes sense if you're making six at a time. But at home, it doesn't make sense at all.

Instead, to use the minimal amount of power needed, fill it either to the "minimum" line or to exactly the number of cups you need. And when it's time to replace it, consider going for a smaller kettle next time - the smaller they are, the less water is needed to reach that "minimum" line.

It's been said that filling your kettle to a lower level can save an average family around £20 over the course of a year. Not a king's ransom, but we find ten places to save this much around the house, that's a nice Christmas bonus.

It also pays to descale your kettle now and then, especially if it builds a lot of scale and white marks. Scale makes the kettle slower to boil, using more energy. Descaling is simple, just put half a cup of white vinegar in to a full kettle of water, boil it and leave for ten minutes, the boil it again and wait again, then rinse it well. Scale marks on the outside or on the lid or spout, will also come off with a cloth dipped in vinegar.

Now just in case you're wondering how this is a safety thing - my mother, as a small child, pulled a hot kettle down onto herself, scalding her badly and scarring her for life. Back as far as I can remember, my mother always poured her cuppa and without even putting the kettle down, would immediately refill it from the cold tap to the amount that she'd need for the next time, no more and no less. When I asked her why, she responded:

"Because now the water in the kettle isn't hot enough to burn anyone, and there isn't much water in it, if someone knocks it down by accident."

She meant me and my sister, of course, but it's a habit I adopted when I had my own children. And if you only fill to the amount you need, it'll also save you some money.

The Bathroom Cleaning Product Hoax

I think I want my five minutes back, because I just read an article talking about some blogger whose fantastic social media videos have caused a sensation with their amazing cleaning tips. I stupidly read the article hoping to learn something, but no. What I learned instead is that there are people out there still grabbing whatever random expensive new product the supermarket stocks, and thinking they suddenly need this wonder product. And worse, that there are so many of these sheeple, that certain staple household products are selling out because some random on the internet has decided you should clean your curtains using curry powder.

(Please don't. I made that up. But I guarantee that if a social media star was pictured doing that, the local Sainsbury's might well run out of Garam Masala.)

A stroll down any Household Cleaning aisle would make it seem like a home needs eleventy bajillion sprays, soaps, bleaches, cleaners, cloths, polishes and fresheners.

But guess what... tomorrow morning, well before dawn, I will be teaching a new employee about the wide range of chemicals used in the process of cleaning a lavatory, and as we perform our transformation in the loos, changing them from grubby to pristine, the reality is we'll be using two whole products. Two whole products for the toilets of a busy, dirty factory. A factory loo only needs two, just like homes, but companies like to bamboozle us with scare-words to make people believe certain things...

Myth: Everyone uses special anti-bacterial cleaning products and it's normal. You need to kill the flu virus.
The number-one way to limit the spread of disease is WASHING YOUR HANDS with ordinary soap. Even hospitals know this and they've known it for many years. It was true when your grandmother was a child and it's still true now.

The second is to basically: clean things. Just clean them, not perform a science experiment on them with ridiculous fancy products.

If I told you it's normal to waste money because everyone does it, would you automatically do the same? If you wish to waste money and believe in these advertisements that are designed to scare you into wasting your cash, then please put your money in an envelope and post it to me instead. Thank you.

Myth: Surely my bathroom needs specialist products for each special, er, thing. Like, you can't use toilet cleaner on a shower.
Who told you this and why do you believe it? Oh, it was the ads on tv? Well now it makes sense. Except that it doesn't. There's also a terrible scare campaign against ordinary household bleach. Repeat after me: Bleach is not bad. Bleach is not bad. BLEACH IS NOT BAD.

Look. Me, as a professional who works and trains in the cleaning industry, I have to tell my new recruits that we don't use bleach. The reason we don't use it at work is that there is the potential for some idiot to mix it with something else dangerous, which can cause serious reactions, fumes and real danger.

But just like you would not drink washing-up liquid or squirt it up your nose (because that is not how you should use it) you can also use bleach safely if you take care with how you use it.

The only two things you should ever mix bleach with are water and plain soap. Nothing else. Ever. Do not mix it with drain crystals and think it'll do a better job. Do not put it in shampoo to shift stains. No. Do not mix bleach with anything except plain water or plain soap. Open the window first and be careful not to sniff or splash - this means beware of your eyes and face.

Grab a spray bottle. Fill it 3/4 full with warm water first. Add a couple of capfuls full of plain, cheap bleach. Add about ten pumps of ordinary hand soap. This is your bathroom cleaner and it will take care of anything you throw at it.

You don't need toilet cleaner (you've just made one). You don't need special tile cleaner, or sink cleaner (clean them with your spray, and for any rings, grab that creme cleanser). Spray, wait a few minutes, brush the loo. Spray and use a sponge scourer on your sinks, bath, shower and door handles. Done. Keep in mind, like any soap product this stuff needs to be wiped off these surfaces afterwards with a wet cloth.

Your bathroom floor? Half a bucket of hot water, two squirts of hand soap and a capful of bleach in the water. If you have grout that is stained, grab your handy spray and go to it with an old toothbrush.

So what special "cleaning chemicals" have we used?
Bleach

Plus something we're likely to have already...
Hand Soap

And if things get tough around bathroom taps or drains?
Creme Cleanser on an old kitchen scourer

Wow. That's not very shiny, expensive or scientific and mysterious, is it?