Kitekat and the art of saving March 30, 2010

Our cat eats too much. At least he seems to be eating all the time, since we moved house and he started staying inside most of the time. He’s always trying to get food by whining and whining, unless I ignore him and he reverts to more constructive and healthy hobbies like tearing toilet paper into pieces. Anyway. The 12-pack of catfood, which once lasted a week, now is empty before you know! According to a guide, a cat like Spooky should eat more or less 250 grams of food a day. So I began to make a sign on the writing board on the fridge every 50 grams I gave him and now I’m sure I’m not giving him more than it’s healthy.

Just out of curiosity, I made calculations about how much he costs us in catfood if we stick to the right amount every day. In this case we have to buy 76 packs a year, which means more or less € 300. What if instead, hipotetically, we gave him 300 g a day? That’d make 91 packs per year, € 360 totally. Wow! We can save € 60 a year simply by keeping track of our cat’s eating. Which totally makes sense, since he’s a recurring cost (I hate to call my lovely hand-muncher a “cost” but you know what I mean.) And the central point of recurring costs is that, well, they are recurring – you don’t care much about what you’re spending a single time, but you start caring if you do some maths. It’s a ah-ha! moment.

So, how much can you save by being careful about recurring expenses? € 60 might not be a lot of money, but what about saving € 60 a year in other fields as well? It might sound tiring and cheap to have to check every area of expense, but really it’s just a matter of taking a habit, of thinking about those everyday actions we usually take for granted. And sometimes not wasting is enough to save, so it’s just common sense.

Water is one of the things most taken for granted in the Western world, object of much wasting, especially by showering and flushing. Do we really need long showers? Wouldn’t we be clean and relaxed enough after a few minutes? I’ve also read in more than one on-line place about a tip for not wasting the water from the shower which is not hot yet: just gather it in a bucket and use it for flushing. (Not recommendable if you have guests though.)

Electricity and heating in the winter are two areas where being careful and reducing consumption can really save a lot (many old condos in Italy still have central heating and some flats are so hot that people have to open windows!) so a programmable thermostat is a must. (20 °C is the healthiest temperature.)

Anything you use on a daily basis might be used in less quantity. One doesn’t have to make terrible sacrifices: just choose the areas where reducing is possible and maybe smarter, the possibilities are more than one thinks.

Using your washing machine? The measure of detergent that’s really necessary is always inferior to the one recommended by producers, which, at lower temperatures (30/40°) can even be harmful, leaving residue on clothes. Try and find the right quantity for your machine and water type. If you use Colour-Catcher and the clothes you’re washing are not so bright-coloured or not so new, use just half a sheet.

There are also expenses which can be just cut. Many of us pay yearly subscriptions for magazines they then get tired of, or for TV channels they stop watching that much after a while. Just set your priorities. If you love to buy/rent dvds, don’t pay for more channels on tv (I, being a film lover, do buy a lot of cheap dvds on www.play.com, where I can find films which aren’t released in Italy).

Readers: what do you do about recurring expenses?

[Picture: it's him! The hero of this story.]

Goodbye Swiffer! March 29, 2010

I love Swiffer as the next person: it’s a great invention, it’s handy and easy to use, it catches all dust – and who doesn’t hate dust? But it’s disposable, anti-ecological then, and expensive.

I’ve been looking for a cheap alternative, so I was thrilled when in a forum I was given this idea: use pile cloths instead. “Pile”, as an English term used in Italian, indicates a soft textile made 100% of polyester, which is used for sport garments – the correct term should be polar fleece.

Well, being totally synthetic, this textile generates electrostatics, so it really works as well as Swiffer. And of course can be reused and reused after it’s washed. Check out my new colourful Swiffer-surrogates, made from an old scarf!

Not so skin deep March 29, 2010

It’s almost 10 years since I discovered organic cosmetics. I used to wash my hair with some Garnier shampoo then and I thought the 3 phases treatment by Clinique was the best for my face. Little did I know about what these products contain and I lived peacefully without knowing. But one day I started having problems: my scalp was itching and had crusty spots. The dermatologist I saw prescribed me a shampoo for dermatitis, which didn’t change the situation much.

One day, doing some research on the web, I ran into an e-commerce site which sold shampoos and other cosmetics made with hemp – they were described as lacking in SLS, among other things. SLS, sodium lauryl sulfate: that’s how I found out that shampoos usually contain a large quantity of this substance, a surface-active agent which helps foam forming and is also very irritating. A bell rang. Could that be just the cause of my problems, that I had become intolerant to SLS? I bought some shampoo and conditioner from the site and tried. Well, yes: my dermatitis went away, and moreover my hair, which tends to be greasy, now was shiny and displayed a lovely colour. It didn’t happen immediately, because my scalp had to adapt, sort of, to the new chemicals used on it – which, as I then found out, is quite common. For a while my hair felt heavy after washing, but after the first tries it was like reborn. And the hemp conditioner: pure delight! Apparently hemp is chemically akin to human skin, which makes it a perfect “ally” for our beauty and health.

I gradually changed my whole beauty routine, making some mistakes along the way (a face cream by Lush once filled my face with strange pimples!) but ending up with nice and healthy hair and skin. Organic cosmetics are not cheap, but using them is indeed being a smart consumer. Besides, these products don’t have to be used in large amounts to work and they last long. And – you don’t need to buy many products if you are using some quality ones.

I started getting information about the ingredients of cosmetics, their dangers, and the so-called “natural” alternatives, by reading discussion by experts in dermatology and chemistry and consumers. Now I knew each product has on its label a list of ingredients called INCI, and the position of each ingredient on it varies according to the quantity. It’s laughable, for example, that some shampoos are marketed as “made with extract of the extraordinary flower from New Guinea” when said extract is ingredient number 30 on a long list… (I’m making up the flower but you sure have heard a lot of marketing stunts like this!)

Besides SLS, worst offenders include petrolatum, which comes from petrol (yes) and clog the pores. Traditional foundations abound in petrolatum, which explains why face skin after a while gets greasy. There are hundreds of substances that are better avoided and for different reasons: some are irritating, some pollute the environment, some are of animal origin, some can even be absorbed by our body or be suspected carcinogens. We have to be careful about the matter: there are many hoaxes going around on the web, which somehow belittle the validity of all the studies about the danger in the chemicals of everyday use.

Chemist Fabrizio Zago has compiled a huge directory called Biodizionario, giving his own evaluation of the chemicals found in cosmetics (and cleaners). It can be easily consulted by everyone around the world since it uses a red/yellow/green code. It’s particularly useful for a specific reason: it’s not just the certified organic products which are green – sometimes even a cheap wash or shampoo bought at the grocery store can turn out to be a safe one.

Italian users can find useful information about natural cosmetics in the site Sai Cosa Ti Spalmi and its discussion board (which includes a directory of hundreds of INCIs analyzed by the users). The lazy ones can get started by reading SCTS’s first on line magazine issue, with its clear article about the first steps to knowing organic cosmetics.

It’s nice to know that by treating better our Earth, we can also cuddle ourselves.

Hello everybody March 29, 2010

This is the version 2.0 of a blog with the same name which was published on blogspot.com. I’m reproposing the old posts before posting some new ones.

The blog is run by a struggling book editor named Raffaella living in Italy, more exactly in that green flat land in the North called Pianura Padana. This is my first attempt at writing a blog in a continuative way, in English moreover. The fact is, it’s now 2 years since I discovered the big world of “frugal blogs” and such: blogs about saving money, spending smartly – living on less, but also living well, making choices based on our personal priorities, smart choices, green choices also. A new way of facing the consumerist world we live in. I found it all fascinating and the ideas on the blogs I read start rubbing on me. I’ve never been careful about money before but somehow I felt I needed to. Too much unsatisfying shopping had left the mark, and I started to be a smart – at least, smarter – consumer, to educate myself and experiment. I remember when I realized it’d be wiser to buy store brand chips instead of the expensive ones… Er, yes, one has to begin somewhere.

So, as you can see, careful here has a double meaning. Hope you enjoy your visit!