Super Household Saving Tips

The "Space Age" officially began on the 4th October 1957 with the launch of the first Sputnik satellite but it wasn't until the 1960s that we really began to believe in our new space age world.

Wages rose, imported goods from China and Hong Kong were extremely cheap and those who had endured rationing as children and youngsters revelled in a new-found abundance.

The fashion industry began to take off, as did the cheap package holiday abroad. Suddenly a way of life which had, until then, only been available to the very wealthy was now available to the vast majority of ordinary working people.

And, almost to a man, we all admired / envied and wanted to emulate that lifestyle. So we bought the latest fashions and threw them away when they were last year's style, we wanted colour in our homes, space age modernity and were mesmerised by the styles which 12 months later were so dated.

We somehow forgot how to create our own style and relied on magazines and TV to tell us what was 'in' and the children we brought into the World we raised with a throw away attitude. Cheap toys thrown out broken all too soon, fast meals, convenience foods stacked full of salt and fat, flavour enhancers and colouring, E numbers, a poor diet altogether but at the time we thought it marvellous.

It's why you'll find toys from the 1950s and before in normally good condition for their age and those from the 60s and after are often in appalling condition if they have avoided being thrown away. We lost our values.

And since that era a further generation has grown up which largely has no understanding of how to make do and even less idea of how much fun it can be making something entirely new from something old.

Well, first of all when you must buy a new item, buy the best quality that you can.

Buying cheap goods - in clothing and furnishings - is false economy, they are not built to last. This applies to most fashionable lines in High Street chain stores, the more in vogue the item, the more likely it is to be worn out before you have attained its value in usage.

Second, think of what you will do with that item when it has served its purpose.

Can you recycle it? What could it be turned into?

You need to think of the materials from which an item of furniture is made in order to assess whether it can be recycled or even possibly repaired to extend its life. Cheap furniture is not usually suitable for morphing from one form to another, quality furniture usually can be given a second life.

I have a set of shelves which has been made from an old wardrobe and child's cabin bunk bed, on the way to becoming shelving, they have had several incarnations - but I think this is their final form.

You probably have become used to disposing of old furniture by getting it picked up and taken to a dump somewhere. Imagine if you had to dispose of it yourself and nowhere you could dump it.

First and foremost, if you really can't think of a use for the item and it still has life in it, consider offering it on your local Freecycle Network.

This is a wonderful way to recycle all kinds of items and in many cases you may be helping someone who is just setting up a home. I'm not sure if there is an equivalent in the States of the Freecycle Network in the UK. Freecycle is split up into local groups so most folks don't have too far to travel to collect or deliver an item.

If anyone knows of the same type of organisation in the States, please give me a link to put here.

Next, there's your local charity or thrift shop, consider taking smaller items to them so they can make a little for charity. The Salvation Army often can take larger items but this will vary from area to area.

If the item isn't suitable for any of those methods of disposal then, before you have it dragged away, consider carefully if there is any part of the item you can use. Let your imagination wander.

I have seen (but sadly have no picture of) the stripped wooden frame of an old armchair used as a framework for climbing roses in a garden and, if nothing else, this is at least a humorous and remarkably effective use.

No ideas? Please consider scouring second hand bookstores for copies of books such as The Complete Book of Household Management or something similar, probably dating from no later than the 1940s, as these usualy contain instructions on making small items of furniture, wooden puppets, rabbit hutches - in fact, almost everything under the sun including serviette folding and how to set a table formally.

This is where you might expect to find the biggest savings to be made but it isn't necessarily so.

Where your greatest expenditure lies will to some extent depend on where you live and what you do for a living. Mine is fuel costs, not so much for my car, more to keep my home heated comfortably. It is difficult to see how I could make savings there at all. I have cavity wall insulation and plenty of insulation in my attic but, even so, in the worst Winter weather (it can reach - 26 degrees C overnight) it will cost me at least £60 per week (over $100) to heat my home.

My car has only done 8000 miles in six years.

Food is one place where I can save money and often have had to over the years. Of course, most of us eat far too much anyway and there are obvious savings which can be made and which will do our health a power of good at the same time.

Cut out the luxuries, the sweet, sticky spoil me things which you've become used to having every day. Think about when you were a kid, these were a treat not everyday normalities, aren't you depriving your kids of the joy of having something special once in a while as a treat if you give them it every day?

Otherwise referred to as using up the leftovers.

There are so many ways to do it that I can only give a few ideas here - though I may add more in time.

If you find your family regularly leaves food on their plates, then put less on the plate to begin with. Better still, put the food in dishes in the middle of the table and let them take what they want. If they still leave food on their plates then gently point it out to them, even heap it all onto one plate so that they can see how much is wasted and remind them of this when they go to fill their plates at the next meal.

Point out the food is there, if they want to top up what's on their plate, they can when they finish what they've already taken. This way you have perfectly good food left at the end of the meal instead of a mangled mess of bits on plates. Now you can plan what to do with it.

There are a number of options with leftovers and which you choose will depend on how much time you have. Some folks like to keep a stockpot bubbling and put suitable leftover food in there so that there is always a beautiful warming soup available.

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