ALDI cosmetics and household products - new Cruelty Free International certification!

Good news - ALDI have now received the Leaping Bunny certification from Cruelty Free International for their own brand cosmetics range.  They received certification for their own line of household products back in July last year, so it's great that they have now been able to make the step of having their cosmetics range certified. 

This is especially good for those, like myself, who live in smaller towns where there is not such great access to cruelty free brands and products.  I'm quite happy to shop online, but I do like to go and buy things in person now and again as well.  I haven't had a chance to check out the ALDI ranges yet, but I'm taking a guess that they are also budget-friendly. 

You can check out other Leaping Bunny certified companies and products here at the Cruelty Free International website. 

10 life hacks around the house

 

I am always on the lookout for life hacks around the house, whether they save me time or money, or just help to make life a little better.  So when I spotted an old Reader’s Digest book called ‘Household Hints and Handy Tips’ on a charity shop trip, I was excited to see what gems I could get out of it. 

 

The book is from 1992, so a lot of the advice, for example, the financial management section, is quite outdated.  Nonetheless, here are 10 hacks I picked up as I read through:

1)    If you want to line-dry a garment without pegging it, use a pair of tights.  With a delicate sweater, for example, thread a leg through each arm of the sweater, then pull the waist of the tights through the neck hole.  Peg the tights to the line, and you’ll avoid peg marks on the garment as it dries. 

2)   Store earrings by fastening them through the holes of a large button OR use an ice-cube tray as an organiser to keep earrings in a drawer.

3)   Freshen carpets with a homemade dry shampoo – sprinkle the carpet liberally with salt or cornflower (the book also suggests oatmeal, but presumably it would need to be fairly fine), leave for a couple of hours, then vacuum off. 

4)   Cleaning light bulbs keeps them brighter.  Remove them from their fittings when cold, and wash with a damp cloth.  Make sure they are completely dry before refitting. 

5)   Don’t make your bed when you get up – apparently, we lose up to 300ml of body moisture each night, and if you make the bed immediately, this moisture will be trapped in the mattress and bedding.  Leave the duvet or covers back for at least 20 minutes before making the bed. 

6)   Always use two pillowcases to protect pillows from skin oils, night creams etc getting into the filling.  If you have foam pillows, these are particularly susceptible to damage from oils. 

7)   If you want rice as an accompaniment to a meal you are cooking in the oven, you can cook the rice in the oven too.  Measure the rice by volume (50-90ml per person) and put into a dish which has a lid.  Boil double the volume of water, add to the dish, and cook in the oven with the lid on.  It will take a bit longer than on the hob, but it saves boiling a pot. 

8)   I try to use bowls and dishes to store food in the freezer, and so I sometimes run out if several are in there at once. A tip from the book is to line a bowl with aluminium foil, place food into the foil and freeze.  Once the food is solid, you can lift it out of the bowl in the foil, wrap it over, and put it back in the freezer. 

9)   If you can’t stand the fiddly process of peeling shallots, garlic cloves or small onions, pour some boiling water into a dish and soak them for a few minutes.  Let them cool down, and the skins will be far less papery and annoying, and much easier to remove. 

10)   Instead of buying a purpose-made steamer, you can steam vegetables using a metal colander or sieve set on top of a pan of boiling water.  Place a neatly fitting lid on the colander, and keep an eye on the water level in the pan in case it boils dry. 

These are not ground-breaking, I will admit, but I hope they help!

Lily's Kitchen cat food review

This is Daisy!  She is 6 now, and I've had her since she was 12 weeks old.  I didn't meet her until the day I got her.  A girl at work was looking for homes for four kittens, but I was just going on holiday, and there wasn't time to go round and see them. So I just agreed to have whichever kitten was left when I got back.  In other words, it was fate.  I now think of her as my lucky dip cat.

In the past, I've fed her supermarket own brands, and now she mostly gets Go-Cat.  But in an effort to (a) shop more ethically, and (b) rely less on supermarkets, I'm trying out some better alternatives.

Go-Cat is made by Purina, and scores 0 out of 20 on Ethical Consumer's ratings table for cat food.  A big fat zero.  My bad for buying the stuff, that's for sure.  The good news is that things can only get better.  So I'm starting to mend our ways by trying out Lily's Kitchen, which scores a reasonable 12.5.

The good: I can buy Lily's Kitchen at my local high street pet shop.  I got the fish flavour, and it does smell like there's plenty of actual fish in there.  Crucially, Daisy really likes it. 

The less good: it is very expensive.  I've worked out that if I feed her the recommended daily amount for her weight, it will cost me around £275 a year.  It also comes in small packets which will last 5 days at the most.  This means that I'll have to buy several packs at a time, or start walking to the pet shop on a more regular basis.  The packaging claims to be biodegradable (good), but I'd be disposing of around 73 packets a year (less good).

The verdict: if it was up to Daisy, we'd stick to Lily's Kitchen.  However, the steep price and the inconveniently small packet sizes have left me unconvinced. 

The quest continues...

Downsizing (my bin)

My normal sized wheelie bin started leaking a while ago through the lid.  It stays outside all the time, and was starting to crack.  (3.5 kilos of cat landing on it on an almost daily basis probably didn't help much...)  So I had a look at the options on the Council website.  A new standard sized bin (240 litres) was going to cost £33! 

But I was very pleased indeed when I spotted that there was another option, of downsizing to a small bin of 140 litres - for free!  As I can easily go for a month between collections, this was a great (and free!) option.  So I filled in the form, and now I have a super-dinky slender little bin. 

It's a really good incentive to produce less household waste, and I'm thinking of downsizing my recycling bin too.  The new bin is pretty much the same height as the old one, so the cat has not been inconvenienced too much when she uses it to jump down from the garden wall....

(In a bid to kick-start my blog, this is the first of 7 small posts in 7 days - after that, I want to post a bit more regularly.  Fingers crossed....)

Review: Lumie Bodyclock

OK, so it's straight in with a review...  Last year, my partner got me a Lumie Bodyclock for Christmas, to help with the dark mornings.  So this is the second winter that I've has it, and I can say that I would absolutely not be without it now.

I have the basic model, and the 'thing' with these clocks is that they wake you up very gently with an artificial sunrise that takes a full 30 minutes.  So if you set the alarm for, say, 7am, the light will start to come on at 6.30am.  From being almost imperceptible, it will gradually get brighter until by 7 it's very bright indeed, and you'll be properly awake.  And it works brilliantly!

I've had the clock for nearly a year, and it has genuinely transformed my winter mornings.  Before, I would hit the snooze button as many times as I could get away with, and still get up feeling incredibly tired and barely awake.  Now, I can get on with the day, and I feel a lot less tired in the evenings as well, which is a bonus.  It's been like hitting a reset button.

Drawbacks?  It's true, £60 is a lot of money for a bedside clock.  However, if it works for you, you'll consider it money well spent.  And using the controls can be a bit fiddly (this point does come up in the reviews) but once you get the hang of the sequences, it's not so bad. 

Conclusion: this product really works!!  And it's great to find something that lives up to its claims as well.  If mine breaks, I'll be straight on the computer to order another one!