I Am Setting Myself A Challenge

I have been reading a lot about living on £1 a day for food and drink and the "Live below the line" challenge that takes place every year in April to highlight world poverty. I have been thinking about it for a few days now and have decided to set myself a challenge. Not only am I going to live on £1 a day for food and drink but I will also take it one step further and include toiletries, cleaning products, transport, and entertainment within that budget and instead of doing the usual 5 days I am going to attempt a full 7 day week. I will not be including the children in this experiment just myself. I shall wash my own clothes and dishes separately from the children. The only thing that will come from my budget that will benefit the children will be the house cleaning. I have come up with a list of toiletries and cleaning products I am going to need and these are as follows

11p will last at least 2 weeks and will be used for washing face and hands so 6p a week for soap

18p for 2 so 9p each and each toothbrush will last a month so 3p a week for my toothbrush 

25p and will last 2 weeks so 13p a week for toothpaste

40p and will last 2 weeks will be used for washing hair and body in the shower so 20p a week for shampoo

30p and will last 2 weeks so 15p a week for deodorant

67p and will last 2 weeks so 34p a week for toilet roll

£1 for 28 loads I will wash my clothes and bedding twice a week so 2 loads a week 7p

25p and will last 2 weeks will be used for all cleaning, polishing, toilet cleaning, floor cleaning etc so 13p a week for cleaning

33p and will last 3 weeks + so 11p a week

   For cleaning cloths I will use an old towel cut up in to rags you could get one for free by asking family friends or freecycle if they have any old towels they no longer need. So my total spend on toiletries and cleaning products for the week will be £1.21 leaving me £5.79 for food and drink for the week or 82p a day.

Transport will be in the form of the free tesco bus, my legs, and my trusty bicycle.

Entertainment will be the free internet at the library, books and dvd's from the library, the local park, walks, a bit of television, playing games with the children, any free local events, and visiting with friends. (I will only use the home dongle to write my blog post each day I want as authentic an experience as possible)

Drinks will be in the form of chilled water only (argh how will I cope without my odd glass of generic cola)

Food will be mostly end of day yellow sticker reductions (I can see lots of trips to the local supermarket coming up)

I will start my challenge tomorrow and will blog my daily progress for you all to see. Am I mad taking on this challenge ? well I am sure family and friends would say yes but I want to prove that although it may be difficult it is more than doable and yes you can be happy and live for less maybe not to the extremes I am about to but everyone can cut back and still be happy.

Wish me luck as I may just need it   :)

Much Love
Claire xx xx xx