1) I’m not sure that this really counts as being thrifty or frugal but I managed to make it through to January pay day without completely running out of money! Getting paid early in December added together with Christmas and paying the deposit on a holiday has meant that it really has been a tight month though so I’m proud that we managed it.
2) You might have seen my post earlier in the week where I’ve started running in an attempt to get fit. I downloaded the free couch to 5k app and am following that at the moment rather than joining a gym and paying out each month. I’m certainly not fast and I no doubt look like a strange sight wobbling around the streets on a night but I love the feeling of accomplishment.
3) We cleared our garage out this week to start what’s probably going to be a long process of turning it into a usable space for the kids to relax in. We had a LOT of rubbish and we considered hiring a skip which would have been the easy option as we could have just thrown everything in. We soon changed our minds when I started ring around for quotes though – £140 upwards for the size we’d need with some quotes being as high as £225! Instead we bought some strong black sacks and we bagged everything up and made a few trips to the local tip where we were able to get rid of them for free. It’s a couple of miles away and there were pretty long queues each time we went but we did it in the end! Now I just need to clean my car out! 😉
4) I’m always saying that you should try different brands when you shop to see if you can shave a bit more of your weekly shopping bill. So if you buy a branded make for something you should have a try of the own brand version instead to see if you can tell the difference and if you already buy the own brand version then you can try the value version.
I’ve tried this with varying success to be honest so I know that whilst I can get away with own brand cereals, biscuits and pasta but would face a mutiny if I tried anything other than Heinz ketchup and Hellmans mayo. This week I tried to buy cheap bread because the loaf we currently buy is £1.10 (I think) and the own brand bread is about 40p. It didn’t go down well at all to be honest and tasted thick and stodgy – at least we tried though! I also tried own brand porridge oats this week though which was a success (that could be because there’s only me eating them though) and saved about 50p a pack – not much but better in my pocket.
5) I’m getting better about buying things in bulk when I see a really good deal and now that I have space in my garage I can do that even more. I saw a great deal in the clearance section in our local Tesco the other night on some Andrex toilet rolls – the packs were slightly damaged but not too much and they were less than half price for the big packs so I bought them all! I shouldn’t need toilet rolls for some time to come!
What frugal or thrifty things have you done this week?
Don’t forget to follow the ‘Five Frugal Things’ Pinterest board as I’ll be pinning all of our frugal things photos on there. You can find it here if you want a quick peak….
Follow Cass bailey’s board 5 Frugal Things I’ve done…. on Pinterest.
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address to the box on the top right of this page and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram.
Image credit: Shutterstock, Gstockstudio
