I’m just going to put it out there that I’m really not a fan of the word ‘FRUGAL‘.
I chose it as a blog name all those years ago because it sounded good with the word family and it did seem to sum up what I was trying to achieve. In my head now though, the word conjures up images of miserable people doing without the things they want in life to save money and even the Thesaurus uses words like miserly, scant, skimpy and insufficient to describe frugal and that makes me a bit sad.
I’d like to re-write the definition of the words thrifty and frugal so instead of using all those miserable sounding words, it says this:
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that being thrifty and frugal isn’t even always the cheapest way to do things. Take Miss Frugal’s bedside cabinet for example, rather than getting replacing it with cheap one, we bought some good quality paint and new knobs for the drawers and we gave it a makeover. We turned her ‘seen better days but good quality’ cabinet into a beautiful (and quite glam) piece of furniture.
We could have bought a cheap plain white cabinet from Ikea or Argos for about what we paid for the materials to do the makeover but that would have meant replacing a good quality piece of furniture with something of lesser quality. It would have also meant getting rid of a perfectly nice piece of furniture for the sake of it being the wrong colour with more than it’s fair share of scratches and marks on it.
Another example of spending money to be frugal is my soup maker which was the best Christmas present I’ve had in a long time off Mr Frugal. The model we have costs about £65 which is a lot for a gadget but it’s used at least 2-3 times a week and means that I can pick up cheap reduced price veggies at the end of the day and literally prepare them to go in the soup maker in about a minute. I just add them in along with some stock and some boiling water and turn it on – 21 minutes later my soup is ready to eat.
I could obviously use a pan or my slow cooker to make my soups but then I’d have to prepare the veg (now I rarely peel and just roughly chop it) and blend it to the right consistency when it was cooked. I just don’t have time for that as often as I’d like so I know that more often than not, I just wouldn’t bother unless I had my soup maker so I wouldn’t be saving all the money I have by taking soup to work for my lunches or having our weekly soup and toasties tea.
There’s also things like the fact that I have a Brita water filter (I use the own brand filter cartridges but they’re still not cheap) when I know that water from the tap is perfectly fine. I have the water filter because everyone in the house except for me swears that the tap water is disgusting so it’s either a water filter, bottled water or no water. Obviously no water isn’t an option so I invested in the water filter as a cheaper alternative to bottled water – it might seem un-frugal but it saves money on the alternative.
And the latest addition to my spend money to be frugal collection is a pretty fold up bag for life that Mr Frugal bought me last week from Cath Kidston because as much as I’m getting the hang of taking my bags when I go do an actual shop, I still never have a bag with me when I’m out and about. This one folds up and goes in the pocket of my bag and looks much prettier than a plastic bag for life and even has slightly longer handles so I can pop it over my shoulder rather than just holding it.
Do you have something you bought that helps you to be more frugal in your day to day life?
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