Tentatively Tasmanian

I’m trying my hardest to be cheap to run.

As our Air BnB is costing us a small fortune while we await settlement of our house and a complete repaint on the inside, I’m not only recovering from the cost of groceries in Australia but also personal grooming stuff.

You know, shower gel, moisturiser and the like.

Luckily, I’ve got skin that doesn’t seem to know the difference between posh, OK and desperately cheap and dodgy.

I’m not too proud to have a good rummage through the bathroom cabinet, and, on the strength of Olive the landlady’s statement that anything found in the pantry, cupboards or bathroom have been left by previous guests and are fine to use, I’ve been doing exactly that.

Firstly, the food. I superstitiously crossed myself and drank the dusty moccona coffee stuck to the bottom of the jar; used up the rock-hard brown sugar and formed a particularly dense cowpat of damper out of the ancient flour that thankfully did not contain a colony of weevils.

A depressing shuffle along the ‘personal hygiene’ aisle at Woolies left me trembling at the prices. How is it that Aussies are famed for regular showering and smelling clean (remember, I’ve spent twelve years in Europe where deodorant in summertime seems to be an option rather than an automatic necessity), but even refill packs are nudging twenty bucks?

There was already a half-used bottle of some fancy bio shower gel, but I got through that in a couple of weeks. Craig* has very sensitive skin and needs to use very gentle, non-perfumed, non-invasive stuff and I did not want to press the pump on that and increase the cost of replacing it twice as often.

Another snuffle around and I found some ‘dry damaged hair’ shampoo, which looked pretty decent and smelled rather lovely. I figure it’s just detergent and bubbles, so why not?

That’s now been used up and I’ve refilled the original leftover shower gel bottle with Johnson and Johnson’s ‘no more tears’ baby shampoo. I’ve forgotten how nice the aroma is and am busy soaping up with that every day. No more tears indeed.

The bottles remaining at the back of the cupboard are all hair conditioners and even I know that they won’t soap up on my body but will slide down greasily into the drain, so I’ll leave them be. For the moment at least.

My cheapskate and foraging tendencies also involve my face and my armpits. I used up the bottle of moisturiser that the airline gave me in their care pack and used the one in Craig’s care pack. It’s got oil of some kind in it, is white in colour and seems to feel suitably moisturiser-ish when smeared over my face. I may have the visage of an elderly baby or a puffy scone with two squashed currants for eyes, but my skin is surprisingly non-judgmental.

Having exhausted the roll-on anti-perspirant crammed into my bathroom bag, there were two bottles lurking in the cupboard behind the loo cleaner and spare towels. Now this may not be everyone’s cup of tea (or crusty moccona) but they were both almost full and I reassured myself that if anyone else had used them, it would have been directly after a shower and on clean armpits. This decision was a brave one for me, but my anxiety about the cost of groceries and awaiting our money from France which seems to have dissolved into the online ether dissolved any concerns.

Thankfully, nothing on my body has dissolved so far, but I would not be averse to a layer of flab doing so.

* Name changed to protect the innocent