Packaging Matchmaking

Now you can read "Charlotte's Web" while listening to Nick Drake and watching "Bambi", but there is nothing, nothing in the world sadder than this:

Ah, the missing puzzle piece: gone forever or just snuggled up in the drawer of the DVD player? You'll never know with a toddler in the house.  If you are One Mean Housewife, you might also find yourself quite upset by this:

It's an empty packet of baby pyjamas.  Look at all that plastic.  Look at all that reusable plastic, with its resealable zip lock, just crying out to be used again for something or other.  What a waste to chuck that straight in the landfill.

Now I can't stand waste, but I don't want to be the subject of one of those Channel 4 extreme hoarding documentaries.  Once every three months after Toddler Boy was born, as I unpacked the next size packets of vests and pyjamas, I was faced with a selection of those plastic wallets and every time it was an uncomfortable experience.  To bin or not to bin: that is the scrimper's question.  Couldn't do it.  Somewhere in the whirling eddies of my intuition, I knew there was a use for them.  So I indulged myself with a spot of light squirrelling.    

I wasn't wrong, reader.

Now, you can pop bubble wrap while scratching your itchy foot and writing in biro on a banana, but there is nothing more satisfying than a perfect storage solution.  

It's a match made in packaging heaven.  The packets even come in varying sizes to suit the wee one's different puzzles and, because they are transparent, His Little Highness can look and choose.  How developmentally appropriate, ha.  

Hand-me-down, complete jigsaws in salvaged plastic storage sacks. Oh yes.

One Mean Housewife, for longer than is appropriate, agonises over a shoebox...

Rag Trade-Off

On the 5th of November I received this question from a reader:

Dear Mean Housewife x1:

I am wearing a shirt that I think is a bit too shabby even for a student, and I am about to throw it away. The question is: is it worth washing (cost of soap, hot water, electricity) in order to recycle as clean rag? Or is it cheaper to just buy J cloths or similar?

Yours ditheringly

Martin

It's a burning issue and is just crying out for proper thorough and scientific investigation.  Well, you're not going to get that here.

However, I'm interested in the answer as I have recently washed and cut several garments for this very purpose.  It's a bit of a mystery, the cost of running a wash.  There are so many variables to consider: power, water charges, soap, time spent not having a life, etc.  Let's ignore lots of them and have a rather half-hearted look at the 'details'.

This geeky forum's users reckon a wash might cost about 15p in electricity (I'm assuming you cold-fill because gas is the same price as gold).  The same geeky forum's other user reckons in his area, with low standing charges and high unit charges, it's about 0.1p per litre for water.  Waterwise reckons an average modern machine uses about 50 litres, so about 5p per wash.  Aldi's own brand washing powder comes in at 10p per wash.

So that's a total of 30p for a load of washing.  Now you could wash at least 15 shirts in one wash so I'm going to say 2p to include the shirt in question.

For that 2p, you'll get at least a dozen rags out of the front and back of that shirt (these areas are unlikely to be worn out).  You can pick up a packet of 10 Asda generic blue and white cloths for 36p and you'd have to get to the shop and back.  One-nil to the old-fashioned rag method, I think.

Martin, you may snip with confidence.


One Mean Housewife, clutching an upcycled semmet with intent, gets back to polishing the brasses.