(By Lyndy Mansfield) Now is the time for many of us to face up to the fact that our supermarket bills are slowly killing our meagre budgets.

Here are some healthy quick cleaning tips from Michael de Jong’s of The Humble Art of Zen Cleaning  (plus a few others I added).

Baking soda. This is the best when it comes to a freshener and deodorizer. All you need to do is open a small box and put it in your cupboards or fridge. Pong gone!

Replace regularly.This works well with smelly drains too. Just pour it down the plughole.

Add baking soda to your metal scouring pads.This will stop them rusting.If you still use cotton nappies,( better, cheaper and more eco friendly, by the way) a cup of baking soda in the nappy pail will keep it smelling fresher and certainly more sanitized

.Baking soda sprinkled on to fabric and silk upholstery (not rubbed in) will absorb even the worst of greasy stains.

There are many, many other uses for baking soda. Suss them out. This old fashioned stuff will save you a fortune.

By the way I get large two Kg bags from my local swimming pool outlet. Seems to be the easiest place to get bigger quantities.

Lemons.  No need to go to great lengths about the wonders of lemons. Here are a few ideas you may not have thought of –

Fresh lemon rubbed on cutting boards removes those discolourations from all the foodstuffs you have sliced up on them.

White linen, like table napkins and table cloths, will regain their snowy whiteness if you soak them in a pot of boiling water and a sliced up lemon.

A piece of lemon, dipped in salt will clean yellowed ivory. OK, so we know that ivory is a taboo subject, but many of us have inherited some special ivory cutlery etc that we are not about to throw out.

Lemons make a good, natural flea repellant – chop up two lemons and add to a quart ( about one and a half litres) water. Boil it for an hour. Decant, let it cool and spray on your pets. Worth trying – cheaper and more naturally appealing than those horrible chemical flea mutis.

Salt . For thousands of years salt has always been on hand, and, apart from being a flavour enhancer, has been a long standing purifier and cleaner.

Salt will put out a grease fire. A good idea is to keep a box of it near the stove.

Soften up your new stiff jeans by adding half a cup of salt along with your normal laundry detergent. Do the same when you are washing pantyhose. If you soak them in salt water they will last much longer.

Snails and slugs  will die instantly if you sprinkle salt on them. Well, just giving you a fact. If you are a snail or slug hugger, ignore this tip!

Funny enough, fleas don’t go for salt any more than they do for lemons. Mix up a salt and water solution and spray kennels and blankets.

Ordinary table salt rubbed into your hair while still dry and then massaged well and shampooed as normal, will chase off the flakey bits and itches created by dandruff.