A Juggling Mum

A safe and frugal way of keeping slugs and snails off your plants is to sprinkle eggshells around your plants. The eggshells will not harm pets and add nutrients to the soil.

Photo Source - Flickr - Photogirl7’s Photostream

Weeds that grow between your pavers or pathways can easily be killed without weed killer. Simply boil water in your kettle and pour it on the weeds. It kills the weeds and you don’t have to worry about spraying poisons with kids or pets around. It is much better for the environment, too.

You can read more of my Frugal posts here!

Or if you want some more great frugal tips go and check out the other Frugal Friday participants.

A freezer runs better when it is as full as possible. If you need to fill in some gaps, just put bags of ice in those areas. It will save money, and you will always have ice ready for those hot summer days coming up. Alternatively you can fill empty soft drink or juice bottles with water and put them in your freezer to take up any empty space.

Read more of my Frugal posts here!

Or if you want some more great frugal tips go and check out the other Frugal Friday participants.

One of the easiest and friendliest ways to get rid of mice is to get “mouse oil” or simply buy pure essential peppermint and spearmint oils and mix them together. Put this on cotton balls and place them wherever the mice usually frequent. They’ll leave in a hurry. They absolutely hate the smell, and no one gets hurt, including pets.

Read more of my Frugal posts here!

Or if you want some more great frugal tips go and check out the other Frugal Friday participants.

Image Source: You Grow Girl

Use the cardboard core from a toilet paper roll to start seedlings. Fold in all the way around one end and fill it with good soil. Put one seed per “pot,” starting a few weeks before you want to plant them out in the garden. When the weather is right, simply plant the cardboard tube straight into the ground. The cardboard disintegrates over time and you reduce damage to the delicate roots.

As I was searching the net for a picture to use I found You Grow Girl’s Post on toilet roll seed starters. It explains in more detail how to make the pots and has some great pictures.

Extend the life of your DVD player (and your game console) by turning it off and taking the disc out when you are not using it. If left on with a disc inside the laser will burn out much faster.

I was wondering why we were going through DVD players so quickly until I found this little secret and now we have had the same player for years

If you want some more great frugal tips go and check out the other Frugal Friday participants.

Related Posts -

Frugal Friday - Lower Petrol Costs

I am participating in a $20 challenge on a forum and I thought it might be fun to have a challenge for my blogging friends.

So here are the rules:

The 1st challenge begins on Monday 16th June 2008 and will run until Sunday 30th June 2008

The idea is to take $20 and purchase items to resell for a profit.

You may buy items from anywhere you like and sell them anywhere you like. It’s that simple Some examples are, buying from garage sales and reselling on ebay, buying materials from a craft shop, making it into a bag or clothing and selling it at a market stall etc, the list is endless.

The only rule is that you must start with an outlay of $20 (the $20 can be spent on a number of items) and you have 2 weeks to sell the items.

You may take your profit from the first sales and reinvest it to resell again as many times as you like but for the challenge competition only profit made between the beginning and end date will count.

Now for the fun part, for the first Challenge I am going to give the person who can make the most profit a $20 AUS Paypal credit (that’s a little over $20 US).

If you are interested in joining me for this challenge leave me a comment and then come back on Monday for the first Challenge post.

With petrol prices hitting an all time high it is good to know that there are ways we can lower our petrol usage and therefore our petrol costs.

Here are a few tips to try:

• Be gentle on the accelerator - increase your speed slowly.
• No heavy braking - brake early and slowly.
• If possible remove roof racks.
• Empty your boot (trunk) of unnecessary weight.
• Don’t tailgate - it forces you on and off the accelerator and brake. Leave enough room in front of you so you can control your speed with just the accelerator.
• Keep your tyres properly inflated.
• Don’t use air conditioning if you don’t have to.

If you want some more great frugal tips go and check out the other Frugal Friday participants.

Come and join me for the $20 challenge and you could win a Paypal credit!

The easy part of writing up my budget is done - easy for me because I already had a budget drawn up in a spreadsheet, so all I needed to do was to tweak it a little here and there.

I have decided to just budget from fortnight to fortnight. Rob gets paid fortnightly (at the moment), so I think this is the easiest way for me.

On the day he gets paid I will add any bills that we have received in to the budget as well as any payments due to be paid from the credit card during the following fortnight.

I have upped Robs petrol budget by $50 per week but have left mine alone. I am trying to use my car as little as possible so my petrol costs shouldn’t change to much.

I have allowed $200 for groceries per fortnight. Now this is going to be a stretch for us and I’m going to have to get creative. But now that I have cut Coke Zero from my life that is going to save me around $30 per fortnight (scary hey!).

Ok now for a few ways I have thought to cut down our costs:

- I already shop at Aldi which has been saving us a lot of money
- I already buy bread and milk from Aldi and freeze it
- I already plan our meals however I am going to start including some more budget recipe
- Make cakes and muffins for the kids to take to school for recess instead of premade treats
- Watch power usage
- Watch water usage

I’ll be back again next week with a Budget Review to let you know how I went.