Please note:

This website was set up to get parcels to Australian Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen/Airwomen deployed overseas.

You are welcome to cut and paste information and use it to support sending parcels to our service members serving overseas, however, when you do cut and paste please link back to Ocean Sky & Khaki to acknowledge OSK, and so that people can find the blog themselves.

If there are questions one of us will answer if you comment on a post at the blog.

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Friday, May 29, 2009

On Keeping Costs Down



So how much did this cost?

$00.00 Pre-loved box.
$00.00 Pre-loved Empire Mag.
$00.50 Cheese twisties on special at 2 for $1.00
$00.00 1 box of 10 earl grey tea bags (we have heaps of tea at home although we never drink it. It's for visitors, but few of our friends drink tea)
$00.00 4 x Robert Timms mocha kenya coffee bags. (as above)
$00.00 1 x pears soap. (I like to buy in bulk and have heaps of these here)
$01.99 1 x mini listerine
$01.99 1 x hand sanitiser
$01.00 1 x tennis ball
$02.00 1 x dinosaurs 200g (on special at 2 for $4.00)
$01.85 1 x 100g tuna in springwater
$01.99 1 x pasta dinner pack
$01.99 1 x chapstick (on special at 2 for $3.99)

$13.31

If you just throw in one little extra item each time you go shopping, and you keep an eye out at your supermarket, it's amazing what you can find.

If you look around your cupboards, you can likewise find all sorts of things; tea and coffee sachets, for example. I can't drink coffee - I use instant coffee for baking with, and usually have the sachets hanging about in the cupboard for anyone who drops in to help themselves.

We occasionally drink a bit of herbal tea here, and there are also teabags of different kinds for people who drink "normal" tea.

2 x 170g bags of twisties for $1.00? How can you go past that? One for home and one for sending away. Cheap and easy, and it's also a good size for sharing.

If you're a bit of a supermarket tramp like me, you tend to shop around. Whether I go Coles, Safeway or Aldi depends on where I am and what the time is. In any case, they don't all have the same specials on at the same time, so if you keep your eyes open, you can find all sorts of treats.

Kae's idea about the newsagent is a great one, and rather than turf magazines, it costs nothing to pass them on. I don't buy mags very often, but every now and then is something a bit different to reading online or books.

Hope this helps.

19 comments:

Boy on a bike said...

We're not a magazine buying household - the only thing we get regularly is the Spectator, and I send them over after I have read them because the articles in them "last" well - it doesn't date rapidly like a newspaper. I'm sure there is at least one Poindexter over there who will enjoy reading it - a battalion is diverse enough to include all sorts.

The only other ones we get irregularely are things like "house and garden". I don't know how many troops are into re-decorating their bunker, but I think that would be a dead loss.

I know a few guys that used to like buying things like Wheels etc, so I chased them up a while ago and asked if they had any copies they could send. Unfortunately, they said that with the onset of kids, they had given up buying those sorts of mags. When you visit someone, have a look at their magazine rack and if ask if you can regularly pinch their leftover mags.

Carpe Jugulum said...

Good idea with the different types of tea Nilk, hadn't thought of that.

Spoke to the daughter about this, this morning, she seems keen but i think she may have an ulterior motive.

Nilk said...

Ulterior motive? What on earth for?

I'm a bit slow today, so I don't get that at all.

Interesting snippet: I caught up with a girlfriend this morning and mentioned the blog and she got so excited about it!

She never knew you could send care packages, and thinks it's great. Just send something over and let the diggers know that people do care about them.

Even a tin of milo!

Nothing ulterior or conniving about that.

Probably just an age thing with her. :)

kae said...

Ulterior motive?

Naaah.

Broaden my circle of friends. Nothing ulterior about that!

Carpe Jugulum said...

Nilk & Kae...for shame i would think such a thing, you must be beating them off with a stick in real life....my daughter, mmmmm...not so sure with my baby.

PS...she'll still be a baby to me when she's 60.

(i'll probably get in trouble now)

cheers

kae said...

Beating them off with a stick?

I wish.

Carpe Jugulum said...

I really need to work on my inuendo skills.

Anyhoo....to clarify, my 25yo daughter, (who is currently single), lit up like a christmas tree when i mentioned the parcels & this blog when we went out for brekky this morning. She, it would appear, finds the concept rather appealing in the, oooh rugged.
diggers sense, rather than the philanthropic sense.

Did that make sense???? dunno

cheers

Nilk said...

Second that, Kae. :)

Thanks for the compliment, though, Carpe. That's always welcome.

kae said...

I increase my circle of rugged digger friends... anything else is a bonus.

I think it's good to be able to do something quite simple, and mostly inexpensive, and make a difference.

Nilk said...

Here you go, Carpe: Military Friends.comJust for your girl.

Carpe Jugulum said...

Ta Nilk, thats a pandoras box for my lea. I still question her motives though. As long as she never brings home a sailor, (trust me i was a sailor)

rusti said...

Hi,
I have only just found out about this site by accident and would love to send parcels to our men & women soldiers & K9's. Can I send canned items like smoked mussels, sardines, condensed milk & dog heartworm tablets & flea stuff as well? I've never heard anyone say we can send parcels to our troops why is this not advertised so hopefully more people will do this?
Anyway if someone can advise me on this I would appreciate it very much.
cheers
rusti

kae said...

Hi Rusti
Anything from home is appreciated, and I think your idea for tinned oysters, mussels etc would be appreciated. Just remember to keep the box under 2kg and it's free.
Have a read around the blog to see what to send, there are lots of ideas here. Tubes of things like condensed milk are better than tins as the tins are large and it depends on where they are whether they can share or would need to toss out the remains of a tin of condensed milk. You can get jiggers of milk from the supermarket and I've see 150ml tetra paks of longlife milk at the supermarket.

rusti said...

Thank you kae for helping me out with the idea of the tubes instead of tins that would definitely weigh less too.I will be going out today to grab a few of those BM boxes too and stuff them with as much as I can!Thanks again for your help.

rusti said...

Hi again,
just hoping you can help me out here again as I dont have anybody I know in the army, but I've been sending care packages to the troops and K9's both in Afghanistan & East Timor and I have received replies (which I'm so thrilled about) knowing these packages do get to the troops is a great feeling. Anyway I wanted to let the troops that replied by my return envelope that I received their reply and was so happy, the poor fellas even wrote on a posted note and sticker of their appreciation! I cried reading about their gratitute for such a small thing..I have a couple of names and they're from Combat Team Delta, so if anyone knows if I can get a reply to them I would most certainly appreciate this very much.
Thank you in advance
Rusti

rusti said...

Hi,
Rusti again, so silly of me but the guys from Combat Team Delta who replied by mail to me wouldn't know me as Rusti so if you could let them know the message is from C & J Kozicki they may remember that name...so sorry to be a nuisance an thank you for posted my coment....cheers
Rusti

kae said...

Hi Rusti
I've changed the post - click on the title of the blog to go to the latest page.

rusti said...

Thanks so much Kae for doing that.

I sent a big box of stuff yesterday filled with lots of goodies for our wonderful troops gosh they deserve a lot more, but Im sure it will put a smile on their dials...
cheers

kae said...

Hi Rusti
When you comment on the blog can you comment on the latest thread, otherwise noone will see it, except if they've signed on to receive notifications for that thread!