If you are using soap flakes, you will need to liquefy them first. Add one tablespoon of soap flakes to one cup of hot water, stir and dissolve.

The art of shampoo making is choosing the ingredients to suit your needs. There are many herbs and essential oils which can be mixed and matched for maximum aromatherapeutic qualities.

CHAMOMILE SHAMPOO: Make a fresh infusion of chamomile tea, using two tablespoons chamomile to one cup of hot water. Leave for five minutes, then strain off the plant matter and add one tablespoon soap flakes to the hot liquid. Scent the shampoo with the essential oil of your choice, such as lavender or rose. This shampoo is perfect for fair, fine hair and you can make an extra infusion of chamomile leaves to use as a conditioning rinse.

LEMON ASTRINGENT SHAMPOO: Add a few drops of lemon oil to the unscented baby shampoo. Shake to mix. This gives hair bounce and a delightfully fresh fragrance.

SOAPWART (Saponaria officinalis FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY): This herb is a natural surfectant (meaning that it lathers when agitated in water) that is used by some of the world’s classiest cosmetics companies, such as Clarins. You can grow it in your garden and use it for free. Soapwort is very suitable for sensitive skins and scalps. Soapwort is grown from seed. To harvest soapwort for use you need to use the whole plant, roots and all. Chop and simmer in enough water to cover for around 30 minutes. Use the resulting liquid as a base for shampoo, or liquid soap. You can infuse the lovely scented pink flowers of the soapwort to add fragrance, or use essential oils. Store in the fridge.

Soapwort should not be taken internally.

PET SHAMPOO: To control fleas and keep your pet looking shiny, try adding a few drops of Tea Tree oil to basic unscented shampoo, or make up an infusion of dried lavender and pennyroyal (about half cup each) soaked in two cups hot water. Strain the infusion and add one tablespoon soap flakes.

SAGE SHAMPOO: To keep dark hair looking lustrous (and ward off grey hairs!) infuse two tablespoons of sage leaves in one cup of water, stand for five minutes and drain. Add one tablespoon of soap flakes and keep in the fridge. You can also make an extra infusion of sage leaves to keep for a conditioning rinse.

DRY SHAMPOO: When you are in a hurry, dry shampoo can have your oily hair looking fresh in no time, and it is easy to make. Mix equal quantities of cornstarch and orris root powder, and rub a small amount into your scalp. Brush out thoroughly the powder takes up the oil and leaves your hair ready for styling.

To keep the beanbag from collapsing and sending beans all over the place, I fastened one side of the opening to the door handle with a strong elastic band.

Then to keep the opening open, I took a big piece of cardboard, fashioned it into a square and stuck it in the opening.

Then I poured the beans into the ‘funnel’ – spilt a few trying to hold camera at the same time, otherwise it worked very well

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You know how it is – something is is listed as an ingredient in a recipe you never get around to cooking, or you got it as an unusual Christmas gift. But however it happens, you end up with items in your pantry that never get used, and which sit there until the next pantry clean up.

If the items have been lurking in the dark depths of your pantry shelves for years, it is probably best just to throw them out. But if they are not that old, look up your recipe books and find a way to use them. The initial cost alone may be a good reason not to waste them!

Here are a few items likely to be lurking unused in your pantry, and how you can use them easily in your everyday cooking.

Rosewater: Often bought with the intention of making home made Turkish Delight, but when you find out how complicated it is, it’s just easier to buy a box of good quality ready made. But there are other ways you can use rosewater. Try adding a few drops next time you are beating whipped cream, or a cake. The rosewater will add a subtle flavour that will taste sensational. Add a few drops to icing mixture, raspberry jelly, or even jam – sprinkle a few drops in plain green or black tea and allow to infuse for elegant rose tea. There’s no reason why something as useful as rosewater should languish. It can be an acquired taste for some, but once acquired, it is never relinquished.

Buckwheat, soy or spelt flour: You were on a health kick, but it turned out to taste like corkboard.  If the flour has been there too long, throw it out, but if you still have a good usable supply, don’t waste it. While these flours can be heavy in regular recipes, replacing a quarter of the regular flour used with some of the speciality flours you buy and never use is a good way to save the money you spent from being wasted. As an additive to regular recipes, these flours add a pleasant nutty taste without being overwhelming.

Herbal teas: You can just drink them, but if you decided you really hate the taste they can be brewed up and used in other ways. Most herbal teas make excellent hair rinses, especially chamomile, which helps bring out the highlights in blonde hair. Mint tea is excellent for soaking the feet after a busy day, and is also very soothing for rinsing the face. Soothing tea mixtures like chamomile, lemon verbena and mint can be used to fill sleep pillows (don’t break open the tea bags, just use them as they are) or for adding to your bath.

Herb Flavoured Vinegars: They won’t go off (vinegar is already off) but don’t be afraid to use them. Just substitute the herbal vinegar for the regular vinegar you use to make salad dressings or pickles. If you’ve already cracked open the bottle and you hate it, put it to good household use. Add it to hot water for floor and wall washing to keep the house smelling herby fresh.

These are just a few ideas to use up those odd items at the back of your pantry.  But don’t forget leftovers in your fridge – yoghurt remains and mango and cucumber  can be used for face masks and skin treatments,  and odds and ends of cheese and cold cuts can be baked into muffins and quiches. The old saying is true – waste not, want not, because you can always put something to good use.

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We are going to have to seriously rethink frugality. All the old good advice is crumbling under the weight of modern life – like buy second hand, eat frresh foods…especially the latter.

I was thinking of thinking of cauliflower cheese for dinner. A good frugal meal if ever there was one, especially if you make the cheese sauce yourself. After all, a kilo of good plain cooking cheese can be had for around $7, and that makes a lot of cheese sauce.

I was all gung ho until I got to the fruit and vegie aisle, and discovered some rather small cauliflowers (for my lot I would need at least two) priced at $7.99 per caulie. What??

Visions of a good cheap healthy meal flew out the window. A couple of bags of frozen caulie would be cheaper. So much for eating fresh and staying healthy and saving the planet blah blah.

According to the Monthly Inflation Gauge, its all due to floods and natural disasters, it’s only temporary, and is balanced out by falling rents and other household supplies. What do they mean by that? No one I know has noticed any fall in rents, and if by supplies they mean electricity and water, everyone knows that’s going up. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Well, at least one piece of traditional advice still holds good. I have half a dozen caulies in my garden, at a cost of $3 for the punnet of seedlings. If I’m spared another flood, that should be a good return on my investment.

The general tone of the comments is that there is no such thing as ‘frugal fatigue‘ and anyone who claims to be feeling it is really suffering from ‘envy fatigue’ and is a traitor to the cause. What poppycock! I am 64, and all my life I have been following the frugal path. I was raised by frugal parents – my 12th birthday gift from my father was a bike he made himself out of spare parts (yes, I loved it) – and my mother made my clothes and refurbished hand me downs on her old Singer pedal sewing machine.

I raised my own kids frugally, and was proud to see how healthy they all turned out on home cooked meals. I’m the first to say frugal is good – it means your kids don’t grow up on junk food and junk entertainment. It means they understand that they can’t have everything they want, and grow up unspoilt, decent human beings.

I can pinch a penny til it howls in pain – but to say I have never, in 64 years, had frugal fatigue would be lying. Of course I get sick of penny pinching. Of course I would love to shop somewhere that doesn’t smell of unwashed second hand clothes. Of course I would love to have something that someone else hasn’t worn out.

Which is why I learned decades ago not to sweat the frugal stuff. I refused to feel guilty and a traitor to my own frugality if I bought myself or my kids something new. I couldn’t do it often, but I’m a hedonist – I couldn’t deny my greedy self the pleasure of seeing my girls prance around in brand new bubble skirts. I couldn’t figure out how to make them, they were too new then to have been given away to thrift shops, and they gave the girls such pleasure. I realised then that being frugal is not about being joyless. It is about saving money in one place so you could have a bit of fun with it somewhere else.

Things have changed so much over the years, and so have my ideas of frugality. Frugal and cheap still makes sense to me, but cheap and second hand doesn’t cut it anymore when charity shops have restyled themselves as ‘vintage’ and put their prices up so much that they are no longer the first port of call.

I have rediscovered the joy of wearing something no one else has worn before by attending sales and buying fabulously marked down clothes cheaper, or the same price, as the second hand shops. The proliferation of dollar shops means I can buy a new shelf unit and put it together myself. It lasts longer than a second hand one that is already falling apart, and I have the pleasure of knowing I paid cash, and saved money, just like before.

Once upon a time, buying second hand made a lot of sense. Items were well made to start with, designed to be sturdy and to last, and were indeed a bargain. But things have changed. Most goods are cheaply made and designed to give up the ghost as soon as the warranty runs out. Second hand furniture made from cheap MDF and ply is in pretty bad shape when it turns up in a  second hand shop. Clothes get pulled out of shape and stained because they are cheaply mass produced in the first place, and worth nothing when they get passed on. But still the second hand shop puts a five dollar sticker on them.

That is frugal fatigue in a nutshell for me. It’s become so fashionable to be frugal that people with more money than sense think it’s just divine to find ‘vintage’ stuff at a price they consider ridiculously cheap. People think it’s chic to hammer good old pieces of furniture with chisels and chains to make them look ‘more distressed’. Frugal is a way of life for me, not a fashion statement.

It’s more frugal these days to buy new, at sales and warehouse outlets. using the frugal mantra of paying cash and avoiding debt. I worked in a thrift shop for a couple of years and was staggered at the number of customers who offered me a credit card to pay for their ‘frugal’ purchases. As we didn’t have credit facilities, they were equally shocked at being expected to pay cash.

How to avoid ‘frugal fatigue’?

First of all, give yourself permission to buy something new, as long as you can afford it and it’s not on a credit card. Enjoy it. You only live once.

Learn to cook really well, and serve your family or yourself tempting, healthy meals. That includes the occasional dessert. Penny pinching shouldn’t mean sucking all the joy out of life and feeling virtuous about it.

Be stern with yourself and accept that some things may just not be worth buying cheap or second hand. Fridges, for example. These days you want a warranty. Save for, or lay by, what you need to be new and working.  Shop around, find a good price.

Make frugality fun for yourself and your kids. You may not be able to afford to buy them iPods, but you can give them memories they will cherish forever for practically nothing. Take lunch out into the backyard for a picnic, start up your own band with home made instruments, go to free events like Carols by Candlelight, and turn every birthday into a celebration of that child’s existence in your life. For yourself, get to know the public library, take your lunch to the nearest park, tend a garden of your own, even if its only a few pots on the balcony.

This thinking man of mine has been very useful in more than just remembering my purse before we head out. Where for me a shopping list is a blank piece of paper that you write everything you can’t see in the cupboard on (also not good for me because if I cant see it, I don’t remember it), his is a couple of pages. It has everything we normally buy and he marks off what we need and writes the quantity next to it. He doesn’t forget what he cant see, because if its not in the cupboard, it is definitely on the list.

Additionally, and I thought this was going over board at first – he meal plans. A whole fortnight of meals is pre-planned. That way, when he does the shopping list he only buys what we need for those meals. Now you could possibly not believe the amount of money we have saved by using this little system born by my husbands desire to have lists for absolutely everything.

As it has been so successful for us, and he is an extremely experienced graphic designer, he has created a version he sells through his website. iImagination.

An aesthetically pleasing version of our shopping list (except with a whole heap more items we don’t buy) it divides your shopping trip up into segments, has a meal planner section for extra savings as well as a section on food additives and why it is best to avoid some – extra help if you are the exhausted parent of an allergic or hyperactive kidlet.

To add to the value, each page is laminated making reusable again and again. We use a whiteboard marker – but as my teen daughter has advised, even if you accidentally use a permanent marker, you can still clean it by using a whiteboard marker to budge the ink of the permie.  I was quite amused how she discovered this little secret.

Designed entirely to help make your shopping trip faster, easier and cheaper, I believe that as a money saving device, it is infinitely useful and worth having.

There is two other books in the series, also based on husbands penchant for checklists on everything, both very useful to us recently. Moving house and Holidays. Yes – he had a holiday checklist where every sock was accounted for… at every stop.

So if you are like me and need some false organisation, or just a bit of assistance in getting organised then these are worth checking out. You will find that being organised can save you time and money!

Just take a single handkerchief. It helps if it has some sort of circular pattern because you start by straight stitching a circle around the centre:

Next you draw up the thread so that it forms a bag shape, like a bubble:

Now you fill the bag with dried lavender buds:

Draw up the thread tight so that the lavender is enclosed in the bag, and put in a few stitches to hold it all in place:

Finally add a pretty ribbon bow and make a loop so the lavender sachet can be hung in a wardrobe. You can stash them in drawers, gifts of clothing and baby blankets, or wherever you want the scent of lavender.

The completed lavender sachet:

I have nearly finished two shoeboxes, for a boy and a girl aged 5-9.

I was hoping my little chihuahua guest, Princess, would look more impressed!

The teddies are ready for school – here is a close up of their backbacks with exercise books tucked in:

My granddaughter Chloe gave me the idea for the backpacks. She is fascinated by the project and quite sad to know that there are children who may not get Christmas presents. “But what about Santa Claus?” I told her we were helping him…

I have started making shoeboxes for the Operation Christmas child appeal. I started collecting shoeboxes and Christmas paper to cover them.

Covering the box is a tricky operation!

I shall also be checking out the craft patterns at the website for items to add to the box, as well as hitting the shops.

The Samaritan’s purse website also has a great campaign going where you upload a picture of your tap (or faucet!) and the sponsor will donate $2 to the Samaritans good works. It’s great fun, and i’m happy to know my humble kitchen tap raised $2 for water projects.

Here’s what I did with an empty plastic bottle last night. I had an open can of dog food that I wanted to put in the fridge but I didn’t want it tainting anything else – like cheese!

I peeled the label off the bottle and cut it in half with the kitchen scissors. Then I covered the can of dog food with some greaseproof paper and inverted the lower half over the paper and rammed it down. It works fine, though a straight sided bottle would probably have worked better.

I am using the other half – with the neck of the bottle – as a handy funnel for filling recycled jars with dried beans, rice or whatever without spilling it everywhere. You can see it propped in the glass.

I have also heard you can put potting soil in the lower half and grew little plants there, like a terrarium. I intend to use plastic bottles – well, the bottom half anyway – to place over seedlings to protect them from frost.