This is cross-posted to my new frugal/growing/making/cooking blog, The Really Good Life.

I’ve reached the end … of my shampoo bottle and our mayonnaise jar. And it made me wonder…

Every vaguely-frugal/green family has their own tricks for getting those last bits of gloop, sauce, oil or whatever out of jars and bottles – but what are your top tips?

Most bottles – from condiments to shampoo – are easily emptied by standing them upside down for a few hours.

Cooking sauces – jars/cans of tomatoes – are easy too: a little squish of water around to pull off the last of the sauce/juice then into the pan it goes to be reduced off.

Cooking oils bottles and jams & honey jars get left in a bowl of hot water to make the remaining contents a little runny and easier to pour out.

Metal squeezy tubes – like tomato puree and old school toothpaste – can be rolled up and squeezed, but the new plastic toothpaste tubes aren’t so rollable – cutting them open seems the only option.

What other methods do you use?

(A companion post to the one last October – super tips for reducing energy usage/heating bills in the winter!)

After a few false starts, summer is definitely here in the UK now and it’s the warmest it’s been for a few years (although that’s not saying much really). We’re not really equipped for very hot or very cold weather – because until we started messing with the climate, we didn’t regularly get either – but air con is now de rigueur in new workplaces and play places – offices, shops, cinemas etc. People are also increasingly buying small air con units for their homes but generally more people just run fans to keep air circulating — both of which, of course, use electric juice.

How do you keep yourself and your home/office cool? What are your favourite super tips for keeping cool without using a lot of energy or water? I’m expecting that everyone knows to stay well-hydrated and not wear thick woolly jumpers/scarves in the midday heat – but what else do you do?

• We get a lot of tutorials on making random old textiles into bags or aprons – but this is the other way around: use a cute old apron as an instant cafe-style kitchen curtain. I also love Ki’s use of an old paint roller as a kitchen roll holder.
• Courtney of the Greenists linked to this TED Talk by Treehugger’s Graham Hill about becoming a weekday vegetarian.
• Crafting a Green World on how to upcycle plain tiles into pretty coasters.
• I’m a sucker for not throwing away those last couple of yards of yarn at the end of a ball/project – and here is a very mini project to use them up.
• Speaking of using up scraps, Sandra of sawdustandpaperscraps make a very nice pinstripe picture frame using scraps of wood.
• And finally use an old hardback book and a dull pad of paper to make a more hardwearing and fun notepad.

You guys, I have a confession – I’ve been creating more to-landfill waste than normal over the last few months and I don’t really know why.

In our old house, it was rare that the landfill bin was even a quarter full when it was emptied but here, it’s always over half full, two-thirds full by the time it’s emptied. That’s a lot of rubbish.

I think there are a few things at play – we’ve been doing a lot of work on the house & garden which has generated waste. We’ve had a lot of deliveries related to that, so more packaging waste than normal. And, most important, as we’ve technically moved cities, the balance of what we can recycle has changed too – we can recycle glass now but can’t doorstep-recycle plastic or corrugated card. (We’re more likely to reuse glass jars etc and we’ve had a lot of card because of the DIY/deliveries.)

But I think it also feels harder for us to recycle than it used to be – we have to separate out the recycling more, our compost bin is three flights of stairs away from the kitchen, we’re eating in more so creating more food-related waste (although not specifically food waste) and even though the house is bigger, it feels like it has less bin space in the kitchen (so can’t separate in there) and we haven’t got any cellar space like we used to have for medium-term storage of items to be reused. Excuses, excuses.

Almost needless to say, I want to solve this situation! Becoming a zero waste household isn’t feasible for us but I’d like to cut down a lot, preferably down to less-than-the-old-house waste levels.

Some ideas I’ve had:

• reduce! The first wave of DIY stuff has mostly come to an end so that’ll cut down a lot of waste and also make it easier for us to bake/cook more at home & cutting down on food packaging
• get multiple bins (or a single divided bin) in every room to separate recycling on the spot (we already have multiple bins in some rooms and it’s a great help)
• get a covered bin in the front yard for stuff to take to recycling facilities at the tip (at the moment, we’ve got stuff in carrier bags – it looks untidy and isn’t waterproof)
• free up some space in the store room (the closest thing we have to a cellar) and half-a-garage to allow more storage space for reusables
• set aside a specific box for charity shop stuff and donate the contents regularly
• research an animal poo solution! (Something more like a bin to break it down rather than a cork to stop it coming out in the first place.)

But what else can I do?

Here’s a question that’s been I’ve been wondering about for a while: at what point is it better to buy something new than keep repairing something old?

On this site, we’re all about reducing & repairing – not buying things new for the sake of it or because they’re a bit scuffed & dirty – but with many things, you reach a point of diminishing returns and it feels like you’re throwing good money/time/resources after bad: at some point you have to make a decision to replace it. I suspect the precise point where that occurs depends very much on the item but I wondered what you think about when you’re deciding whether to repair or replace.

Is it a question of your skills? the item’s repairability? availability/affordability of new parts? its not-just-financial value? Other factors?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.