Riga resident shares money-saving habits: second-hand clothes, AI recipes and mustard powder for dishes
Vita, a reader of the Latvian daily Latvijas Avīze from Riga, describes how she cuts everyday spending on clothing, food and cleaning amid high prices. The newspaper estimates such habits could save about 1,200–1,300 euros a year, though it calls this an illustrative example.
With prices for food, fuel, heating and services pushing people to watch their spending more closely, Vita, a reader of the Latvian daily Latvijas Avīze who lives in Riga, has shared her everyday money-saving methods. The piece is part of a series in which readers describe how they cope with inflation, and it follows an earlier article about a family who chose to raise their child at home instead of sending the child to kindergarten.
Clothing and footwear
When she needs new clothes, Vita usually checks the shops Sinsay and Pepco or Riga Central Market, and she does not rule out second-hand stores. For footwear, especially winter shoes, she starts at the Central Market; in her experience, shoes made in Poland have often been the most practical. This summer she bought several pairs of sandals at a discount at the store NS King. She mends and alters clothes where she can, and takes more complicated jobs to a seamstress.
Food
Vita often buys products that are on offer and only then decides what to cook. To avoid throwing food away, she tells Google Gemini, an artificial intelligence tool, which products at home are nearing their expiry date and asks it to suggest a recipe.
Household cleaning
She buys laundry powder, choosing an ecological one, but washes dishes with mustard powder, uses baking soda for kitchen dirt and cleans windows with water and a little vinegar. The article's author cautions that not every "grandmother's trick" found online is safe: wood ash mixed with water forms an alkaline solution that can irritate skin and damage some surfaces, while potassium permanganate is a strong oxidiser and can leave stains.
How much could be saved
The paper's illustrative calculation puts savings at about 110 euros a month: 30 on clothes, 20 on footwear, 45 on food and 15 on household chemicals. That comes to roughly 1,320 euros a year. Another estimate cites about 100 euros a month, or more than 1,200 euros a year. The real amount depends on what a person previously spent and how consistently the habits are kept.
