Posted on 21 Mar, 2008 -
Your soul, Your Oven, Your Supermarket…
A bit of a gallimaufry of tips this week, with:
* A ‘faffling’ piece of wisdom to help you float above trouble
* The best and cheapest way to clean your oven?
* How to save hundreds of pounds by avoiding the brand names and going for better cheap alternatives...
PLUS: SEND IN MORE SUGGESTIONS!
A few weeks ago I sent you a letter about the Tao of Eyore (and P’u) and a kind reader, Phil, has since sent me another lovely idea that I wanted to share with you.
If I allow my guard down I can sometimes find that even the smallest of worries, threats or ‘nasties’ can completely fill me, paralyse me and blot out most of life’s pleasures for a few days. In a few days it will be forgotten but for the time that it stays with me it can blight my every moment.
I loved, therefore, the idea of having the mnemonic of ‘Faffle’ that this Life is a Bag of Revels reader has coined to remind himself of some wise advice he read many years ago.
Here’s what you do:
F = Face it, whatever the problem or dilemma is.
A = Accept it.
F = Float above it
L = Let time pass
“This little piece of simple advice” says Phil, “has served me well at times of stress.”
Use a 50 pence piece to scrape your oven clean
The second reader piece of advice I wanted to pass on to you comes from a lovely lady called Dorothy who says that the cheapest (and less toxic) way to get an oven clean is to simply scrape off all the burnt stuff with a 50p coin!
Here’s what she said:
“Hi. my daughter was in hospital having my first granddaughter so I looked after my two grandsons, I was so excited about my granddaughter I could not sit still, I decided to clean up not that it really needed it, but anyway I thought I’d do the oven but could not find any cleaning for ovens, well what I came up with was great, I used a 50 pence coin to scrape off the burnt shelves and the sides, it worked like a dream when my daughter came home and used the oven she asked what id bought to get it all so clean, when i told her 50 pence coin she thought i was pulling her leg, i told her I’m not and that when i was a child we were quite short of money so we improvised, then i use a half a crown some time an old penny if we didn’t have half a crown, tell your friends they’ll make a big saving on cleaning stuff.”
How to save hundreds of pounds by avoiding the brand names and going for better cheap alternatives…
And finally, off on a completely different tangent again, I’ve been wanting to ask for your input for a few months now and this is a perfect slot for it.
You see, in the past few years I have become a great lover of supermarket bargains and am hoping you might join me in compiling a list of great alternatives to big brand products.
Here, for example, are a few of my own favourite super-bargain products:
The Boots Basics range do a huge bottle of body lotion for about 35p that is great for dry skin and lovely to apply. Their baby bubble bath is also brilliant - and far better than the adult one. These products do not, unfortunately, seem to be available in all branches.
From Lidl, I have found that the Opticat cat food (silvery packet) seems to have almost exactly the same ingredients as the expensive Hill’s Science Plan cat food you get from pet shops (although I haven’t of course looked at is scientifically but just read the packet!). A friend of mine swears by Lidl’s dishwasher tablets. My mum won’t eat muesli from anywhere else. And I have finally found an alternative to Persil Non-Bio that doesn’t make the clothes smell all perfumey (I have found that the smell given off by products like washing powders makes me instantly irritable and itchy).
If you have a few seconds, I’d love it if you could send me in a few of your favourite recommendations for great products at nice prices. Then I’ll compile a big list and send it out to all my readers.
Prices, they say, are going up, but together we will beat it! The past two years have been about retailers getting rich as they used more and more imported products and labour (e.g. from China) but kept charging us the same prices. Now it’s time for the buyers to get savvy and put the fat cats through the wringer!
