The $20 Challenge

Equals... 


Now I've shopped heavily from the Coles homebrand range, in terms of things like flavour and quality it's not going to be as good. But for $20 there has to be compromises. All these fitted in a standard shopping bag, I got two for a bit of added strength. These are good for general carrying tasks and could come in handy for a dozen different things. 

Generalised purposes for each item are as follows:
-Water bottles. Water is good for you to drink. Also needed to cook the rice if it gets to that. 
-Aluminum pie dishes. I was going to get a 10m roll of foil, but these looked interesting. I'm going to make another post detailing uses for all this stuff, I'll experiment the effectiveness of these in that post. But long story short, I'm planning to make a pot to boil water and cook rice, a spoon to eat the peanut butter and eat/stir rice, and if it's strong enough I might even try make some fish hooks with it. 
-Box cutter: Any and all cutting tasks
-Pads: Wound dressing, tinder, basic water filter. 
-Matches: Set things on fire.
-Garbage bags: raincoat, shelter, instant backpack, pack with leaves to make a sleeping mat.
-Petroleum Jelly: Assorted first aid, anti-chaffing/sunburn rubbing/lips drying/etc, add to pads for fire making.
-Food: Jelly beans for instant energy, peanut butter for effort-free mini-meal, rice for if you've got time to set down somewhere and cook up.
-Tape: attach pads to body for first aid, joint garbage bags together for making a shelter, folding onto itself and making basic cordage to tie things



The spoon is one folded dish, the pot is two dishes. The spoon has a wide end for the rice, the narrow stiffer end is for scooping peanut butter. I tested it on the peanut butter and it works great. But I just ate dinner and so no point cooking up some rice in the pot.



Cheated and instead of making a fire just tested the pot on the gas stove. Sturdy enough to hold the water no worries, can't really tell it's boiling from the light reflection but there's a nice boil going on. It holds just a tad under 500ml, so boiling 400ml is practical. 

Tired of carrying 3L of water in your hands, don't have a pack? Hmm what do I have to make a carrying method with. I've got electrical tape, let's try that. Took 3 strips about 80cm long, fold it in half length ways on itself, then plaited the three strips together into some simple cordage. I tried to think of a name for making rope out of tape.... but the first thing that came to mind was, well.. inappropriate.


I looped the ends around each bottle of water, taped them up tightly and threw those puppies over my shoulder. Here's some more pics. Worked out great.

Tomorrow I might make a garbage bag backpack with a couple bags. 

In further testing, the peanut butter tastes better than I thought. Also the jelly beans are very effective, as suspected. 

Don't have anything handy to properly test this on, but stood up well to several firm thrusts into a crisp apple. I'm thinking it could be used for spear fishing. I used a pencil, though could use any decent stick or rod you can find.

ok, but at the moment I cant download photos or receipts! (Packing the house for a move);

So, my trip to Aldi today -

825g Fruit Salad - $2.49
420g Short Cut Spaghetti - .69c
2 x 425g Baked Beans - $1.38
2 x 400g Braised Steak & Onion $3.98
340g Corned Beef - $2.69
425g tin Tuna Chunks in Sunflower Oil - $2.10
95g Tuna in Oil - .79c
2 x 85g Shredded Ham & Mayo - $2.58
110g Mussels in Oil - $1.69
110g Sardine Sprats in Oil - $1.69

Grand Total - $20.08 c (I found 5c on the ground, so used that to get the stuff )

Some great entries already!
Might have to detour home tomorrow via the supermarket
Happy to kick in for a prize aswell

Okay, these are 'the wrong' trash bags. They've got the bottom all joined together, not like a standard rectangular bag. They're as thin as I was expecting for the price... shoulda left the petroleum jelly and got better bags

I thought Bics were more than that... I don't smoke, and usually buy 4-5 at a time. Haven't bought a lighter in ages, I probably would have gotten a Bic if they're only that much instead of the matches.

The large ones are usually about $2 (P.P smokes lol)