Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that week just to show you that the small things you do all add up to a great frugal lifestyle where you can learn to live a fabulously frugal life.
Before I start though, I do want to say that being frugal to me is about getting the best value for our money – it’s not about doing without for us or about not having nice things. We all have different financial situations and we’re all frugal for different reasons – we’re frugal so we can afford to do nice things together.
1) I made a batch of my homemade orange peel cleaning spray on Saturday and I finally got around to writing up the instructions for you.
I shared the recipe yesterday if you’re interested and I’m also in the process of setting up a page or a category on here where you can find all of my homemade cleaning ideas because I do strongly believe that you don’t need to fill your shopping trolley with a stack of different cleaning products to have a lovely clean home.
2) The company I work for offer all staff a free flu jab around this time every year so this week on Monday, despite hating all things needles, I had my flu jab which I know is something a lot of people are on the fence about. I’m a huge fan of it though and I’m convinced that it really does work for me usually as I suffer quite badly with a cough whenever I get flu or even just a bad cold. It lasts for weeks after the rest of the symptoms go and is that bad that it not only keeps me awake at night for at least a week, it also makes me actually be sick as I cough so much at times.
I’ve definitely found that since I started getting the flu jab about five or six years ago, the symptoms when I have been ill have been much less severe and the one year I missed it – ironically as I was off work ill with flu – I went back to the same cycle of coughing when I was ill a few months later which led to some time off work ill.
I get the flu jab because being ill definitely costs money! I get full sick pay from work so that’s not an issue although I HATE having to call in sick as it always feels like you’re letting someone down as I have work that needs doing whether I’m at work or not so someone else has to pick up the slack. The costs come in where I feel too ill to do things like meal plan or cook and make poor decisions when it comes to what we’re going to eat – usually, I’ll take the easy option and make Mr Frugal sort takeaway for him and the kids while I hide in bed.
Also, I really hate being ill so anything I can do to reduce the risk of that is ideal – especially when it’s free.
There are other benefits too though – I know that I’m not going to run the risk of passing any flu that I get on to any vulnerable people. The children and the elderly can be affected so much worse than other people and I don’t want to be the one passing it on to them.
Lots of you can get a free flu jab free of charge according to the NHS website but I’ve seen them offered quite cheaply in shops that have a chemist like Boots, Tesco and Morrisons to name a few.
And if you do get the flu or a bad cold then you might like my homemade vapour rub.
3) I really needed a new pair of wellies as the ones I used last Winter have completely disappeared! I popped them in the garage earlier in the year as I knew I wouldn’t be needing them too much on my Spring and Summer dog walks and when I went back in to dig them out they’ve gone!
I popped to the supermarket to buy some and was a bit surprised by the cost of them – £20 for a super basic pair which isn’t astronomical I know but it did seem a lot for what they were and I just couldn’t bring myself to put them in my basket.
I had to pop into York this week for work so on the way home I popped into the designer outlet to see if there were any bargain wellies to be had and I struck gold with these little beauties that were just £12…
I wouldn’t have paid full price for them as £50 is way too much (for me) to pay for a pair of dog walking wellies but at less than 25% of the original selling price then I’m over the moon.
I love them and they’re a much better quality than the supermarket ones that were almost double the price and the pattern is so pretty that they’re going to cheer me up when I have to take the dogs out in the cold, wet, dark days of Winter!
4) For the last few years, we’ve made an alternative advent calendar which has a family activity for us to do together every day in December tucked away in an envelope.
I wasn’t feeling amazing last weekend with some sort of bug mixed in with awful jetlag from our week in LA so I sat and wrote out all of the activity cards and I’m so excited for the start of December when we get to start opening them.
Advent calendars are huge these days and can be ridiculously expensive whereas this one is free to make and you get to make some great family memories every single day in December which is really what Christmas is all about.
5) I have some dried lavender that I bought really cheaply at this year’s Festival of Thrift with a vague plan to make some lavender bags to hand on my headboard as I find that lavender definitely helps me relax on a night.
I do have a brilliant homemade lavender sleep spray that I use most nights but I’ve not been sleeping well at all lately so I’m hoping that some little homemade lavender bags will help me get back into my sleep routine.
I’m not going to share them with you just yet as I’m not sure how well the smell with last with the way that I’ve made them but if they go well, I’ll be back with more info on how I made them.
As usual, we’ve been having some really good discussions this week over in our Live Well, Spend Less Facebook group. We’d love to welcome you to our little community if you fancy popping in.
As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing your five frugal things from your week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.
You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with the five frugal things linky by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.
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