The great handkerchief debate

The Frankenstorm came and went. DC has returned to normal. The sun is shining...aaaaaannd I'm at home with a runny nose and a fever.

I don't know about you all, but between November and April I average about one cold a month. The rest of the year I do a good impression of Snow White's dwarf Sneezy. I'm just allergic to everything.
I go through a LOT of tissues in a year.

Or at least, I used to. I made the great handkerchief switch about a year ago right after I bought a 12-pack of kleenex boxes at our Costco warehouse club. There were three problems with this in my mind. I think the 12 boxes cost about $25. I could easily spend over $50 on Kleenex in a year. Not to mention the waste! Oh, and tissues take up a huge amount of space. I have, er, fond memories of going into the linen closet as a kid and having my father's stash of 24 kleenex boxes topple onto me. No thank you. I desperately want to stop stockpiling.

But alas, I'm also a medical librarian. I understand the germ theory of disease, though obviously not well enough to keep from getting sick six times a year! I've worked in hospitals. Handkerchiefs seemed like a really, really bad idea when it came to hygiene.

I looked at when I tend to use the most tissues. Easy -- when I'm home sick I can go through a box in a day.  I now use handkerchiefs when I am sick and quarantined at home. The husband doesn't mind because he never seems to get sick! When I go out in public I use tissues instead.

And what do you know? That stack of 12 tissue boxes has lasted a long time.  Now I use six boxes a year instead of 24 and I figure I save around $35.

I keep my handkerchiefs in a pencil case I got at Harrod's which you can see in the picture. It's one of my few souvenirs of a college trip to London. I'm glad it now serves a purpose and I don't have to declutter it. The pouch takes up less space in the cabinet than a single box. In the future I hope to only keep a couple spare tissue boxes on hand.

Now that I've grossed you all out...what do you think about handkerchiefs? Do you use them? What works for you? Or was there a product that you used to stockpile but now you have something reusable instead? What is it?

Having a cold is good for an anti-hoarder

...because in one afternoon you can go through your entire stockpile of mini tissue packs.

I started with all of these (in my temporarily repurposed corningware)

and now the last one is gone! (unfortunately the cold is not.)

It's time to get out the handkerchiefs. I will not stockpile travel-sized tissues again. I will use ziplocs and regular tissues. Or better yet, a small makeup case a couple hankies.

One easy way to be frugal and get yourself some space in your bathroom cabinet is to make your own. A ziploc and some tissues, or a ziploc and a couple hankies work perfectly fine and for much less money.

If you're more of a DIY kind of person, take a look at the little blue pouch in the top picture. It's a tissue pouch a friend made out of some old discarded fabric. This will be my only travel tissue pack.

Have you made your own travel tissue packs? What works best for you?

So before I go running for the NyQuil, let's do

The Reckoning!

Item 55: My collection of mini packages of tissues.

Fate: My nose.

Cost: probably $4.

Total money wasted on stupid stuff this year: $262.

Forget the soap!

Soap is one of many things I used to buy a lot of when it was on sale. My parents always have a stash of it. But do we need to stockpile soap? No. In fact, I'm realizing I need fewer bottles of soap in the house than I first thought.

Take a look at how much hand washing soap you have and consolidate what you can. Donate the ones you don't like to a local homeless shelter.

As part of my home inventory I found that we have four bottles of the stuff. We should never need more than three, one for each bathroom and one for the kitchen. One was nearly empty so I consolidated them and we're finally down to three.

Where can you get by without a bottle of hand soap? I think we can get by with just two in the whole condo, one for each bathroom. In the kitchen I would prefer to use a soap that doubles for both dish and hands if I can find one. Anyone know of one?

I'm leaning towards making my own dish soap like Annienygma does for so very little money. But this will mean I'll have to keep a separate bottle of hand soap at the kitchen. I have terrible eczema on my hands and I can't use a homemade dish soap for regular hand washing without getting rashes. Maybe I'm stuck with two bottles forever on the kitchen counter.

What soaps do you use? What "double duty" soaps do you like? Do you make your own?