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) Remember, my intentional frugal reset a couple of weeks ago?
In case you missed it, I realised that I’d started to relax a little more around some of the things that I used to be really strict around – the things that used to save me money on a regular basis so I decided to really focus my mind again on the basics of being frugal. Not necessarily because I need to but because I want to.
One of the things that I’d stopped doing on a regular basis was meal planning and that meant that we were spending more on food than we needed to spend. It also meant that we were wasting food which is something I really hate.
We’d wander round a supermarket with a vague idea of what we had in and what we wanted to eat but we rarely stuck to plan and we never ended up buying everything we needed for our weekly meals – all of which meant that we were spending considerably more on our food shopping than we used to.
So, I’m back in the meal planning game and here’s last week’s plan – written out on the fridge, shopped for and ready to go with everything we need bought on last Sunday morning’s shopping expedition.
I won’t need to get anything else from the shops other than a quick top up shop through the week for some salad stuff as we’re planning lots of salad to go with our meals this week to try and be super healthy.
2) Still on the subject of meal planning, I’m really thinking about what we’re eating so it fits well for us and our lives.
Monday’s meal is corned beef hash made in the slow cooker which I put in on Sunday night so it was ready for Monday tea time. I chose this because my partner is working a night shift on Monday and Tuesday.
I made a huge batch so there was plenty for tea on Monday night for both of us before my partner headed off to work and then enough left over for smaller portions for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday for me and enough for a night shift packed lunch for Tuesday night for my partner.
I could have frozen some for another time rather than having the same meal over the course of a couple of days but it’s so yummy that I don’t mind at all.
3) For as long as I’ve lived here, the wires from the TV have just randomly dangled from the TV down to behind the cabinet where they are plugged in. They drive me mad but I thought the only option was to channel them into the wall which I know is a huge job so I’ve never mentioned it, knowing full well that my partner would make a plan to do just that.
He has enough on and they’re just wires so I’ve just put it to the back of my mind.
The last week, we got a new TV (don’t ask – ours died mid way through The Apprentice) and the power cable was quite chunky so I asked him if he could make the wires look pretty. He’s pretty handy so I was fully expecting a full on job to hide the cables in the wall but he told me to go on Amazon and search for cable trunking.
I bought a small rectangular section of cable trunking for £3.49 and within half an hour of it arriving, he had all the cables in the trunking and had it stuck on the wall.
Just look at how neat and tidy it all looks now, and for £3.49 it was a huge bargain compared to how much the alternative would have cost us.
4) I ditched the expensive face cream brands and bought this one from Lidl for £3.49. It’s got Manuka honey it it which I know is a good thing for skin and the jar tells me that it’s good for mature, dry skin.
It’s got great reviews and I love the feeling of my skin after I’ve applied it so I think it’s going to turn out to be a good purchase.
My skin is super dry lately so I need all the help I can get but expensive face creams just seem like a waste when this one seems to be a much cheaper version of the Loreal Manuka honey cream which is £19.99.
5) Have you seen those blood glucose monitors that attach to your arm and allow you to read your blood levels using your phone instead of doing finger print checks all of the time.
I’ve been considering one for months but they work out at almost £50 a monitor which only lasts two weeks. The cost is huge but would potentially be worth it if it worked for me.
The cost was putting me off massively as was the idea of having something in my arm but when I was scrolling on Facebook the other day, I saw a free trial of one of them so I went for it. A free monitor worth £50 which would last me for two weeks so I could see if I wanted to go for this as a long term option.
Aside from the fact that the needle in the monitor had me in tears before I dared even apply the monitor, I just couldn’t get away with having it in my arm. I was super conscious of it all of the time and it felt mildly sore all of the time. The monitor itself then started to report super healthy readings when the fingerprint checks I was doing to confirm accuracy were showing higher readings.
So I took it out (well I made my partner do it as I was too scared) and I now know that these monitors aren’t for me. That’s saved me a fortune right there!
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week!
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!
Talk to me...