A Tiny, Simple Hack To Waste Less, Save Money And Make Having Your Lemon Water Each Day So Easy!🍋🍋🍋

Disclaimer:  I haven't been paid to recommend any products, and this is not meant to be health advice!  If you have any health questions or concerns, please talk to your doctor or heath care professional honeys, hugs x

Hi Honeys
How are you today?  I hope your week is off to a fabulous start🤗 

We're been experiencing another heat wave here and have been melting away all week.  According to the little digital wotnot upstairs in our bedroom last night, it was 28.5C.  I know that might not seem overly warm to some of you lucky people who live in sunnier climes, but here in the west of Scotland those kinds of temperatures can melt furniture! Well, they can certainly melt wee Rosies😀 

I had the electric fan running all last night which, along with her chill mat, seemed to help our furbaby Jade.  It's so, so important to make sure our furbabies are safe in warmer temperatures honeys. They can't tell us when they're in distress.  You can find some useful tips to help keep furbabies cool here (there are some useful tips for us humans too💖) 

What didn't help our baby were the thunder storms that raged, really raged, last night until after 2am this morning.  The lightning too.  I had to switch off the electric fan (for a very short time) and close the curtains during the worst of it because the lightning got close I think?  It literally lit up our bedroom, twice! I was watching tv but the lights were all off (Hubby was sleeping since he had work early this morning. The rain was battering against our bedroom window too.  Such a scary storm.  Jade and I hugged each other and I know she was as relieved as I was when it was over.  

Back to todays post...

Do you drink lemon water honeys?  It's just water with a little lemon juice added (although you can add other things such as a little honey, which I do if I feel a cough or a "tickly" throat starting.  

My day usually starts with getting my first load of laundry going and then I boil the kettle to make my lemon water.  Until very recently, that meant simply adding boiling water to a cup (although I recently changed over to a tiny teapot - an upgrade to my little morning treat😊) and then dropping in freshly sliced lemon.

Around a year or so ago, I bought my tiny glass teapot from Ikea and started using one of the beautiful mugs a dear friend gave me. I so love those mugs. (Thank you Miriam, love you honey x)  As it turned out, my tiny glass teapot holds exactly the right amount for two cups of my lemon water🍋 Yum!

So, Rosie, why do you drink lemon water then? 

I started drinking my lemon water each morning as another step in my self care project.  For so many years now, I kept telling myself that I need to take better care of myself, and I really have tried.  My main issue though is that I'm just the world's worst at seeing anything even remotely concerning myself as a priority.  I have a set-in-stone mental block that will immediately tell me how selfish I'm being.  

Thing is honeys, time is passing (too fast, it feels like) and I have an invisible trailer I'm dragging behind me, chock full of chronic illnesses. I have stubbornly high blood pressure, my lungs have been trying to kill me since I took my first breath and, not content with having rheumatoid arthritis, I also have to be very greedy and have osteo arthritis in my spine too.  Added to this, the fact that I'm still living like a complete hermit with prize winning hermit skills. Seriously, the only time I leave the house is to go to medical appointments and its gone on for so long now that it just can't be healthy.

As I said, I am the world's worst at looking after myself and don't ask me why, but my lemon water is one of the few self care habits I've stuck with.  

I can't promise you miracles just because you start your day with a little lemon water but I've read so many good things online about it, like this article at Holland & Barratt site, and that's why I started.  At the very least, it means I'm drinking a little more water and I know I don't drink nearly enough.

OK Rosie, what's this new hack you're all excited about then?

It's true!  I am excited😊 I know. Excited about lemon and water.  I should get out more, as the old saying goes.  I don't go outside honeys, keep up.  This, and seeing a butterfly at the window a few days ago, are Christmas to me! 😊 

This hack has made my life so much easier, helped me to keep doing something, just for myself, that's healthy and is even saving us money too! (Get on with it Rosie!) Oops. Sorry honeys, told you I was excited😄

Well, while waiting for the machine to finish a load of laundry (exciting I know lol) I was watching some of my favourite home organisation channels on Youtube.  This is where I had my "wow" moment 😲and as with everything else in life honeys, all it needed was a wee bit of preparation...

Saving money and avoiding waste...

My usual routine with my lemons is to keep them in the fridge, so they are always chilled.  This also seems to, in my experience anyway, make them last longer.  I don't know about you honeys, but any produce, not just lemons, we buy now seems to last only days, and in some cases it's already sprouting or going soft when you get it home. 

I worked in retail for about fifteen years and I'm seeing the kind of quality in our weekly shop that never would have made it to the shopfloor years ago.  I used to be able to buy my lemons, and other produce, and they'd last me all week, now unfortunately I'm having to bin one or two of them unused because they simply "go off."  Even in the fridge!  

The answer is, of course, to be more aware when grocery shopping.  Look (very) closely at all of your produce before adding them to your shopping trolley or cart.  It makes no sense, the way things are financially for everyone right now, to waste money buying items that will go in the bin before they can be eaten.  

If I juice all of my lemons at their best, that is to say when they're brought home with the shopping, and immediately freeze them they'll then last me weeks or even a full month because I can buy as many as I would need for that time.  No more waste and money saved. 

Prepare, prepare, prepare...

So honeys, when you get home with your shopping, make a cuppa and get your breath back and then it's time to get to work.  This means meal prepping.... of a fashion.  All of your lovely produce will last so much longer if you take that extra bit of care to wash and prep it. 

Isn't it worth an hour or so and a tiny bit of work to be able to plan your dinners for the week and then to have all of your ingredients all prepped, in the fridge and ready to go?  

This absolutely applies to all of our produce, but for the purpose of todays post, back to those lemons and our daily lemon water.🍋    

Having found the freshest, yummiest lemons in the grocery store.  First thing is to wash them, I'd do that even if I wasn't going to prep them.  Even if I was just going to put them into our fridge I'd wash them first. Yes, I'm a germaphobe honeys😊  All of our produce though, when it gets home from the shops, is washed in warm, not hot, water with a little white vinegar, then rinsed again in fresh cold water.  

Ordinarily, what I (used to) do is to place those lovely clean lemons (I really don't like germs) into their designated space in the fridge and take one out as and when needed.  I did experiment with slicing them and then freezing the slices but it ended up being a pain, having to freeze them all lying flat before I could then pop them all, once frozen, into a ziplock bag.  

Did it a few times but with arthritic hands and wrists... nope. I'm not always having a "good" day.  Fellow "spoonies" will understand what I mean, sending you gentlest hugs dear ones🤗and wishes for the best day, full of spoons💖

Then, thanks to a lovely lady on Youtube, I learned about this....

The photo above shows all of the juice, squeezed from three packs of four lemons, twelve in total. This was all of the lemons in our latest grocery shop, plus four lemons from the fridge.  They were all washed carefully, then juiced using our little electric juicer, poured into the above silicone mould and immediately frozen.  

They were fresher than I've seen from our weekly shop in quite a while, so I was very keen to get them juiced and frozen as soon as possible to preserve all of that lovely fresh and healthy goodness.🍋

Choosing your moulds...

The mould shown makes very large cubes, certainly much larger than usual ice cubes.  I originally bought this mould in order to make chocolate teaspoons one Christmas.  Have you seen those honeys?  Basically, each mould is filled with melted chocolate, I added tiny marshmallows to mine too😊and then a small spoon (I used tiny wooden ones) is stood up in the chocolate mould before the chocolate hardens again.  

The chocolate spoons, basically a tiny spoon encased in chocolate, is then wrapped and a pretty ribbon tied around the wrapper (I used baking parchment) for them to be gifted💖 To enjoy these chocolate treats, they are stirred into a cup of warm milk until the chocolate has melted and you have a yummy chocolate drink. They make lovely little gifts around any of the holidays or as tiny extras to be placed in gift baskets.   

Back to our lemon water then, although now I'd quite like a lovely mug of warm chocolate now. Oh well, maybe later lol😊

The reason I decided to use the large cubed mould was because, as I said earlier, I now always make my lemon water in my little teapot.  This teapot holds exactly two cups of my lemon water.  One cube is equal to a whole lemon. 

Of course if I was only making a cup or glass or lemon water I'd use a smaller mould.  In fact, when I first tried freezing lemon juice I actually used one of my favourite moulds and this does make smaller, more average sized cubes but they're in the shape of penguins.🐧  As you can see, there is quite a difference in size.. 

I've had this adorable ice cube mould for so many years and I think it will always be my favourite🐧🐧🐧🥰

Once frozen, I placed the lemon juice cubes into a ziplock bag and back into the freezer.  As you can see, the bag has some little penguins inside too😊  

I haven't had any problems at all with cubes sticking together in the freezer and I do love that all I have to do in the morning is to boil the kettle and add a (large) cube of lemon juice to my tiny teapot.💖  

Of course, as a bonus, and during the current heatwave I can allow my lemon water to cool and place it into the fridge for a lovely cooling, and healthy, drink🍋😊  

No more having to slice or squeeze lemons freshly each day.  Unless I want to, and add an extra slice or two as I did here.  

The only downside to using our little electric juicer is, as you can see in the image above, the lemon water seems cloudier and you can see bits of the inner flesh, or pith, of the lemon in it. The smaller, penguin shaped lemon cubes had far less of this skin because they were squeezed using a hand squeezer.  

It's fine though, I thought it actually added a little extra zinginess (is that even a word lol) and if it ever bothers me, for future lemon cubes, once juiced, I'll pour the lemon juice through a strainer to remove the excess pulp bits. 

This is truly life changing for me honeys, it really is.  I haven't lost the battle to arthritis yet but, well, let's just say the fight is getting harder.  Anything, even tiny lemon cubes, that helps make daily life even a wee bit easier, is a blessing and I'm so grateful to have found this wonderful little hack.💖

My inspiration...

My inspiration for this clever idea that's making my mornings so much easier is a lovely lady who has one of the best channels on Youtube.  Her name is Noemi and you can find her Youtube channel, called Scandish Home here and her Instagram page is here.  I can't say enough good things about this wonderful lady and the amazing content on her channel.  Please do visit her page honeys, she seems so friendly and her videos are so full of information and always make me smile.  There's DIY, recipes (gluten and dairy free) homemaking, home organisation and so, so much more to learn there💖     

Just for teaching me how to freeze all of my lemon juice so that painful bones don't stop me from having my morning lemon water, although she's taught me so much more, I owe this lovely lady so much.  I don't think she'll ever see this post but just in case she does, thank you so much Noemi, wishing you so many good things and sending you so many hugs🤗  

Over to you dear ones, do you make lemon water?  Have you found any tips or hacks you want to share?  If so, please share in the comments section below.  

I hope you're having the best day, so full of happiness that it makes your face ache from smiling so much🥰🤗💖💝 and just in case you forgot honeys, you matter, you're needed 🤗

Till next time, hugs always x