Items Worth Paying A Bit Extra For When Moving In To Your First Home

When setting up your first home, it goes without say that you will probably be on a fairly tight budget. Before you rush out and buy the cheapest things money can buy, here are a few things that are worth paying that little bit extra for and why.

Consider buying a nice set of stainless steel cutlery. The plastic handle ones may look nice and you can colour match them with your kitchen, but it is very likely that before five to ten years have passed, those pretty little handles are going to start to fall off and you’ll be needing to spend a small fortune on purchasing another set.

A good set of stainless steel knives, forks and spoons are designed to be sturdy and they don’t rust so you are more likely to still have those in twenty years time or possibly even longer.

Again stainless steal rules when it comes to your cooking utensils as well and you may find that a well chosen set will still be going strong in your kitchen in many years.

A plastic set is often flimsy and becomes a nightmare when trying to scoop out your homemade Sheppard’s pie from the dish and it's bending all over the place. Plus if you leave the spoon in the beans or leaning against a hot pan for too long, you may just come back to a rather melted bit of plastic that once resembled your spoon or spatula.

Whilst some metal sets will prove sturdy, it is likely that they will start to rust within ten years and that can put some pretty nasty chemicals into your food that you wouldn't particularly want your family to be eating.

Spending a couple of extra pounds now will save you a good few extra pounds in the future.

A good iron won’t necessarily save you money in the long run because they will all break down eventually and you’ll have to shop around for one again but it will save you an awful lot of time. I don’t know many people that actually enjoy ironing and I’m certainly not one of them. As hard as it is to believe, a good iron will cut your ironing time in half. You should be able to get a decent one for around £40-£80 but don’t just go on price because it’s not always a case of 'more expensive is better. Check out the watts and steam output, the higher that is, the better your ironing experience will be.

Another Ironing Tip – Always check the height of your ironing board before purchasing one. The last thing you want to do is heave one all the way home only to find you can’t reach it because it’s to high or too low.

I may seem a little obsessed with stainless steel items but there’s a very good reason for it. A cheap metal saucepan set will start to show signs of rust in a very short amount of time, I know this from experience. But what I didn’t realise is after that set, my next lot would become just as dangerous to me and my family. I flashed some cash and bought a well known brand name of non-stick saucepans thinking they would last for ages. It wasn’t long though before that set started chipping off the non-stick little bits into my food meaning we would all start eating little bits of lead in with our meals.

So after plenty of experience and online research I concluded that copper or stainless steel saucepans and frying pans are by far better for your health and will save you money in the long run. They won’t get damaged as quickly and you won’t have to keep buying new sets.

This one is not entirely essential that you buy a more expensive duvet and pillow set because a cheap set will do a nice job too, but for me, bedtime is my favourite time of the day. No matter how long a day has been, whether it be good or bad, you just can’t beat being all snug with a lovely fluffy duvet and pillows.

You will find with the cheaper hollow fibre sets that they do go out of shape and flatten pretty quickly, especially after their first run through the washing machine. It may only take a year or two before you are longing to purchase a new one.

Something by Silent Night or DreamLand etc would probably keep fluffing it's self up for you for many years over.