Extravagant Costs of Underwear

Hi Frugalicious People,

Why is it that underwear is so EXPENSIVE?! A bit of stretch fabric and maybe some lace to pretty it up. Each year when I look for a couple of new items I am shocked at the ridiculous prices. Being on the Rubenesque side of things, I can not find inexpensive little numbers. So paying 50% of my food budget to hold my boobs up?! Is a No Way - I don't think so, situation - well this week that's for sure because I'm feeling extra frugalicious.

With an increasing need to lift my Balcony to better heights I wandered into an op shop near a public library I was visiting and there... behold my eyes, was a rack of brand spanking new bras for $6.99. Original Target price tags of $39.99 still attached. I tell you, those who look and wait an extra day are often happily rewarded!

So my lovely Blogland friends go and take a look at your local charity shops - there might be some brand new underwear in your size just waiting to help your body lift its game.

Are you willing to go looking in your local charity shop for that tiny bit of stretchy fabric?

To all ladies having to pay the extra costs for having extra flesh (like I do) I wish you luck on your hunt,

Stephanie @ Frugal Down Under.
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Your Trash Our Cash

Hi Everyone,

It's been quiet here at frugal Down Under and I re-juggle my life with my cut back on work hours, biking to and back from work and picking up Dolly for school. It's wonderful and I will tell you more about it soon :-)

But today I want to quickly show you our cash made from the bottle and cans we have collected in the past 2 weeks. Yesterday he headed to the cash for cans depot and were rewarded with $30!

Dolly Counting and Dividing Money After Depositing Our Bottle and Cans.

Dolly and I split it in half. I placed my half in our family Borneo trip savings and Dolly then divided hers into 3. She placed $5 in the saving for a horse money box, $5 into her spending money box and $5 into her school banking for her future big ticket items (home, uni, car).

I started off with the initial pick out of the recycling bin. Then 3 units out of the 6 gave us their bottles and cans. Also every time I saw one on the footpath in front of our home I picked it up and added it to our crates instead of the bin. And my mum found another 20 of so for us. We gathered a total of 300 with no change to our lifestyle and now Dolly has a great little earner and our Borneo fund is building up again.

Did you make an extra cash this week?

Do You Have Ideas For Men's Shirts?

My partner of 19 years, The Rambling Expat did a big clean out after I complained he was taking so much more clothes space then I did. In his sorting he found 12 work shirts he no longer wears to work because of ripped pockets, worn out collars or stains that will not scrub out.

Men's Shirts.

I don't want to be a hoarder and I am trying to declutter. However these are made of good cotton fabric. As many of my readers know, I'm aiming to not buy new and save more, spend less, so I'm having a hard time throwing these shirts out.

I'm thinking I will use some fabric to make 4 handkerchiefs for The Rambling Expat who often suffers from sinus issues and a runny nose. Now this will only use up 2 shirts. Then I was thinking I could make a 2 more shopping bags similar to the library one I made here for Dolly, so that's another 4 shirts, still leaving me with 6 shirts.

Do you have any other ideas for me? I'm looking for practical, easy to make stuff that we can use in our everyday life or even fun gifts for people in our lives. I don't need rags or cleaning cloths as I have many from other old worn out clothes. Come on, let your suggestions reign :-)

Rubbish Diving

I dived my hands into the recycling bin at my mums unit block and then our unit block. What do you think of that? I thought it was a bit eww as I felt squeamish, however worth the 5 minute effort.

Cash for Cans our 1st Loot.

In my town, marked cans and bottles will be exchangeable for cash. 10 cents per item to be exact. I told Dolly we can earn some extra pocket money getting our neighbours beer bottles and soft drink cans (we will ask them to save them for us, to prevent future diving). Our block of 6 flats overfill the recycling bin each week. We have 8 people who drink a minimum of 1 beer per night. We can easily collect $5.60 to $11.20 a week and split it between us.

At $5.60 x 52 weeks = That's a minimum of $291.00 a year or $145 each. Not too shabby for a 4 year old.

The best part is this will give us a money project together where we can make a little cash, look at the coins and discuss their history/worth/possibilities, plan goals, talk about recycling & ecology, discuss work choices, look at banking & interest, count and use math skills. (If any one can recommend an excellent website or fun book teaching younger children about money please let me know.) I think this will be an interesting project for us.

Oh... and my 5 minutes hand diving... I pulled out 37 bottles and cans just on the top of the bins. There were many more lower down. That's $3.70 to start us off. Pretty cool I think. What do you think? Would you do it? What if they were given to you by neighbours? Would you bother exchanging them? Many people can't be bothered and that is where I think Dolly will reap in the rewards.

Update: One of our neighbours gave us 11 bottles today and will keep all his beer bottle for us. Yeah! So that's 37+11=48 $4.80 head start.