Every week (ish) I share five frugal things that I’ve done during the previous 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.
Hey! 👐
1) OK, so this isn’t the nicest photo but what you can see here is a too good to go veggie carvery trimmings box from Too Good to Go.
It cost £3,39 and you’d have seen much better what was in the box if I’d been a bit cleverer and would have scraped off the big splodge of stuffing that was dolloped on the top and squished massively when the man struggled to close the box as it was so full. If I had removed the stuffing, you would have seen the roasties, roasted parsnips, mash, carrots, peas and broccoli.
The contents of the box filled both of us for a late Sunday Dinner after a busy day and there was enough left for bubble and squeak cakes the next day with a lovely fried egg on top.
2) Our VW Beetle needed a new windscreen wiper mechanism which was quoted at anywhere between £40 and £129 depending on where we bought it from and if we went for used or new so when we were thinking of something to do last weekend for a nice date day, we decided to pop to York and stop off at a scrap yard we know of where you pay £1, go in with your tool box and just remove the part you need from one of their scrap cars.
I can’t even tell you how many cars there are at this scrap yard – thousands I reckon and they’re all organised by manufacturers. We found three beetles in the VW section, all battered but two of them still had the full windscreen wiper unit in tact so we removed it from the car ourselves (I held the screwdriver so totally supported) and after paying the grand total of £10.60, brought home our new wiper blade and fitted in our Beetle.
I tried to take a panoramic photo to give you a better idea but it just doesn’t do the size of the place and the number of cars there any justice at all!
3) There’s lots of jobs that we want to do in our house but obviously we need money to do all these jobs so we’re working through them gradually as and when we have a bit spare. One of the things we want to do is to replace the radiators but even doing the work ourselves that’s a costly job so definitely not one that we’ll be doing this side of Christmas.
We decided to go for a temporary fix by giving them a cheeky paint job using a pot of radiator paint that we bought from Yorkshire Trading for £3.99. We went for brilliant white and the difference when we were painting them was unbelievable – white often starts to yellow over time but you don’t realise just how bad it is until you start to paint it white again.
This doesn’t do it justice at all but honestly, it’s moved a job that was near the top of my ‘must do house jobs’ to way down the priorities list as it looks so much better. The small tin we bought was enough to do two big radiators so it was a total bargain to me!
4) I switched energy tariff this week and saved £25 a month on my Direct Debit. I stayed with the same supplier (Octopus) as I think it’s a really competitive price that I pay, their customer service has always been brilliant when I’ve needed to speak to them and their website is super easy to use.
I get an email from them when my tariff is coming to an end so just went online and looked at what they had available for me and switched in about three minutes flat. Easiest saving ever.
5) This isn’t a huge frugal thing but it’s the little things that add up so I thought I’d share it anyway – Last Sunday, I had a wander around the local farmers market with Master Frugal as we’d both had a busy week so hadn’t had chance to catch up very much. I wasn’t planning on buying anything really but now that he’s working (an apprenticeship actually) and earning he did buy himself a couple of bits and bobs from the stalls.
The first thing he bought was a slice of Bueno cookie pie which sounds amazing to someone like me who really can’t eat things like that anymore and when the lady asked him if he wanted a bag for 10p, he was slightly embarassed that I pulled out a small neatly folded fabric tote bag from my handbag.
He wasn’t embarassed when he used it for the rest of his purchases, or when he took it home with him though. 😉
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things!
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter or BlogLovin and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later!
