General Chat

I like to think that I regularly clean out cupboards and declutter fairly often however....I decided to look under the kitchen sink for a new scourer/wire wool and noticed there were an awful lot of bottles!

So I emptied the whole cupboard plus went to the bathroom and brought through the cleaning products from there as well.

So this is what I found

Bathroom cleaner: 3 bottles
Toilet duck: 3 bottles
Bleach: 3 bottles
Washing up liquid: 6 bottles
Surface cleaner: 3 bottles
Drain cleaner: 3 bottles
CIF: 2 bottles
Dettol: 2 bottles
Scourers in box: 10
Sponges for washing pans: 20
Dishcloths: 10

So I was quite shocked when I put the items of my kitchen table and realised just how much of each I have! You see without checking when I do my shopping list, I just add a bottle here and there, thinking a spare will come in handy.

So next Tesco order, none of the above items will be on it or for the next few orders.

So what about the rest of you? When was the last time you emptied your cleaning product cupboard and sorted it out. It's amazing just what you find isn't it?

Florence in the hebrides

I only have one of most things. I order a new one when the one in use is nearly empty.

In my food cupboard I did have a huge stock of tins & jars but recently we have been using them up and now only have 2 of each instead of 4.

I have to think ahead if I cant get a home delivery and daughter isn't here so I tend to buy say 4 tins of beans, tinned fruit so I have a decent back up if I'm stuck.

I'm actually thinking we might have a bad winter this year as not really had one for a few years so I shall be stocking up on a few supplies. My cupboard in the hallway has a box with spare stuff in it. Pasta and rice I have a good supply of.

The food cupboard gets a good turnaround generally but the cleaning products are a different matter!

I never buy so many different cleaning products as some will adequately clean many surfaces.
My overload, at times comes from the fact that I can't always find something in local supermarkets, so if I do see it for sale elsewhere, I might buy about 3.
I like basic disinfectant, - nothing fancy just supermarket's own, but it often is out of stock, hence the multi buys.
Another multiple purchase has been a certain scent of Lenor fabric softener, which I've only been able to find it Wilko :-0..... but have now found a new supplier at a discount bargain shop, so when my supply runs out, I will be able to buy there.

Just think of all the bottles of wine you could store instead of cleaning stuff!
However I can understand overstocking if you have supply issues.

We have an ongoing shopping list to jot down required replacements and don’t deviate from the list. We have current stock upstairs and down and I swap them round from time to time to use them up.

grannyfanny when I moved we had over a dozen bottles of wines, various bottles of cider and a bottle of Gin given as a present except I hate Gin.

But after my heart surgery, I'm now on meds and can no longer drink alcohol not that it bothers me as I never was a big drinker. So I gave the Gin to a good friend for her birthday and gave the wine away bit by bit for gifts and to visitors when they left.

All we have now is no Secco and diet drinks.

We had a family member who would recite her shopping list.

Bread,sugar tea milk, marg, cereal and cleaning materials.

These she bought regularly. The result was a huge surplus of cleaning materials as

she rarely cleaned the house. :-0 :-0 :-D :-D

:-D :-D :-D@Von

Daughter has OCD so this house gets cleaned more than most and its her that adds the products to the list!

The trouble with having a basement is you have plenty of space to store/hoard things :-D I tend to buy extra if something is on sale and it won't go off so never buy toilet paper; pasta; cereal etc full price.

All this reminds me I must buy some toilet bleach :-D
Oh, and some cling film.

Glad to be of service names :-D :-D

You have reminded me to clear out the 2nd drawer as that is full of cling film etc!

Many years ago when moving house a friend counted and later informed me that I had 17 tins of tomatoes. My habits have changed a little over the years but when Covid struck my "squirrely" nature proved a blessing as I only needed to shop for fresh food.

2 bottles of bleach and some cling film done :-D

My Brexit box eventually became my covid box until OH got fed up with it…….bother I forgot the marmite. If only I still had those boxes :-\

Always a danger !

When daughters MIL was hospitalised and it was obvious she wasn’t going to recover my daughter and son in law spent several weekends at their home helping father in law to de clutter

MIL was a hoarder and the extent opened up the more they moved things out and did tip runs

In a kitchen cupboard were tins with seeping dog food that were over 20 years old

They hadn’t had a dog for twenty plus years

Plus there was 40 unopened bottles of Bermuda rum .

So Bermuda was their favourite holiday place and they went at least twice a year especially after they both retired.

MIL insisted on bringing back the rum every time

But they both hated rum !!
:-(

Oh my Shirley!! What a find.

Shirley, still chuckling at the rum hoard...... And they didn't even like it!! :-D

Talking of cellars, during WW1 there was a shortage of soap, so when WW2 was about to start my grandmother stocked up, so that the cellar was full of bars of yellow sunlight soap (anyone remember it?).

It was one of the things that didn't run out during WW2 and she had enough to last the rest of her life!!

We don't eat much tinned food, but at the beginning of lockdown when they said shops were running out of stuff and people were hoarding, I bought a few tins of meat and veg in case.

As it happened our local supermarket imposed rationing very early on, so nothing ever ran out completely and the tins never got used. I had a look at them recently and they are getting near their sell-by dates, so the local food-bank will benefit next time I am in the village.

The saga of the Bermuda rum made me laugh as well Shirley.

We also have an ongoing shopping list and OH is supposed to tell me if he starts the last of anything so I can add it to the list but he sometimes forgets.

Like Caroline I've got plenty of storage space so I tend to buy things in bulk if they are on special offer and going to save me a reasonable amount of money, so my garage is home to several tins of baked beans and tomatoes, a 5-litre container of Comfort fabric softener which will last me forever as I only use it occasionally on jumpers, and some mega sized boxes of dishwasher tabs. Tomorrow, if the shop hasn't sold out, they will be joined by 2 enormous bottles of Persil non-bio detergent. It's £25 for the 2 but should last me several months.

I know I am lucky because I have storage space and can afford the initial outlay. I feel sorry for anyone on a low income as they probably don't have the wherewithal to take advantage of these offers. It's true what they say - you have to have money to save money.

When my brother died in 1991, he had been living alone for about 5 years after his marriage broke up. Still his wife and daughters were responsible for emptying the house. I went over for his funeral, and so I can attest to this.

After head-shaking about the muddle of the house, we went into the garage, discovered accidentally that he had walled off an area at the back .............. behind he had built shelves that were filled with tinned and packaged foods, including about 5 very large bags of Basmati Rice.

He had never liked basmati rice! Nor had he ever liked several of the tinned foods.

He was preparing for some sort of catastrophic event.

After that, we set about doing the best we could to sort out the house (it actually took several months!) ..... one of his daughters was told by her mother to spend her time going through every file box (shelves full of them), books etc to see if he had stored anything.

Yep ........... cash and certificates for several water and electricity boards bought after they had been privatized were secreted between papers in the file boxes, between pages in books, and in drawers. The eventual total was several thousand £s.

One thing my sister-in-law never did sort out was why did he have about 6 keys that seemed to be for bank safety deposits?? They were all in a small dish on his dresser in the bedroom.

She knew there was one safety deposit at the bank they used, and I was with her when she went there ............. none of the keys fitted that box, and the bank finally agreed to break it open. Empty! She had no idea which bank(s) he could have used, or where they were. His job involved a lot of travelling, mainly in the north but also down south, so the banks could have literally been anywhere..

He was only 61, and never seemed to be suffering dementia during our weekly talks!

Florence we are just ahead of you with bottles of washing up liquid. We have 39 unopened! We do try and keep a spare of everything, I think maybe we miscalculated!