Now that we are encouraged to wash our hands multiple times a day indoors and out soap has become something that my eldest (who is doing my shopping since I am shielding) has been finding stripped from the supermarket shelves. But not once in our house have we run out, or even low. Why? Because soap is soap whether it is labelled hand soap, baby wash, shower gel or cleansing bar - even shampoo works in a pinch.
Multiple times "soap" has been on the shopping list and they has swanned round frustrated customers haranguing frazzled staff for when the hand soap will be restocked, picked up a bottle of baby wash from the next section of shelving and said knowingly to those decades older than them - "this is still soap you know". One of my colleagues was complaining that during the early pandemic he was buying his favourite soap online at £1.50 a bar more than the normal price, and it is just a relatively basic brand. This is someone who is an engineer with a degree and further qualifications. Sometimes thinking outside the box sidesteps the sales patter and saves you money in the long run. Don't keep expensive habits that you cannot afford.
In this case it was saving time and sanity running from shop to shop more than money but I was thinking about this later when stocktaking the shampoo in the bathroom. We buy a favourite cheap brand. I also buy it from a freezer food shop (Farmfoods) as that is where it is cheapest, not somewhere I would have automatically thought of to look. However I am not so precious that if I see something similar on offer at a cheaper price I do not buy that instead. Using a price list (on my phone) means I can check if I need a reminder of the usual cheapest price and I keep a separate budget for if I need to stock up. Toiletries keep for ages so it is an ideal area to grab those savings if you can. (this post explains my system)
For use the contents get decanted into an opaque bottle with a pump both so that we do not use too much but also so that I do not get complaints that it is not the usual stuff. (In fact the only one who is bothered is my husband - the kids just call it Mum's Shampoo and quite like the fact that it might be a different smell today!) I have a second bottle which I refill with whatever I have to hand and swap when the first gets low. No more shaking bottles in the shower to get the last dregs. (Incidentally I let gravity do the work overnight to get the last dregs out of the bottles by balancing the part used bottle in a funnel over the pump bottle- far less frustrating.) I do the same thing with conditioner.
Over the last year I have saved over a tenner on shampoo and conditioner alone just by shopping somewhere a bit different. The pump bottles also reduced our consumption by about half when we started using them a few years ago.
Will that saving make me a millionaire? No. But it will help pay for a weeks food for my daughter as she heads off to uni in September. It is only a tenner for what may seem like a load of effort but by equating it to something that I know I want to get (or in this case cover) it encourages me to see how little dribs and drabs make a huge difference overall when added together.
One final money saving tip for soap - if you are a bar soap user rather than liquid soap user and you use "normal" soap rather than glycerine style soap take the wrapper off the soap when you get it home and put it in the cupboard to store. This allows the soap to dry out or cure even more and the resultant bar will not get as mushy as quickly and will last longer.
Challenge yourself to think outside the box. What can you save?
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