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, as always feel that I should 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. 😉
1) I bought some super cheap chillies in the reduced section at Tesco this week specifically so I could try my hand at making some sun-dried chillies. I got them for 9p and when I got them home, I just laid them out on a foil container that the school sent home with Master Frugal when he made the smallest falafels ever known to man.
The container is now in the greenhouse so let’s see how they turn out!
2) I know I’ve told you about my freezer smoothie packs in the past but I thought I’d share this little beauty with you…
We had to make a smoothie for food tech homework for Master Frugal and the idea was that he was supposed to write a recipe and then make his creation – when he’s tasked with something like this, I’d usually have to take his list and go to the shop to buy all of his ingredients which isn’t cheap.
As he was writing out his recipe for his smoothie creation, he wandered over to the freezer, took out the smoothie packs and did some rearranging so he had strawberries, mango and a couple of raspberries and wrote his recipe based on the quantities we had in. He added some orange juice and it turned out great as well as saving me a trip to the shop.
3) This is me wearing my raincoat in the rain this week…
What you can’t see is my smile. 😉 I’m smiling because I grabbed it from the boot of the car when it started to rain and I realised that I hadn’t worn it for ages. It zipped up without me having to breathe in for it to zip up for the first time in a long time (if ever).
I haven’t lost a massive amount of weight as progress has been super slow over the last month or so and I’ve even put a couple of pound on after a particularly bad week but what I have lost is making a difference with my clothes. Some of the clothes I’ve bought over the years and kept when they didn’t fit in the hope that one day they would fit are actually starting to fit so it’s like a new wardrobe.
4) Our wifi has been struggling to cope with our usage lately so I tasked Mr Frugal with sorting that out when he had a day off. He called up Virgin Media and spent some time on the phone with them where he somehow talked them into sending us a Wifi booster gadget for free – they usually charge for it and also charge an ongoing monthly fee unless you’re on their top package but he talked them into it somehow by explaining how hard it was with dodgy wifi in a house with teenagers. Always remember, you don’t get if you don’t ask!
5) Last weekend we joined Costco so we could buy some things in bulk and save money. I’ll probably write a separate post about this because there are undoubtedly some amazing savings to be made if you buy in bulk at somewhere like Costco – or even Amazon.
We use this Schwartz Cajun Seasoning lots in our house and the cost per 10g based on the current price in Tesco is 36p whereas here, you can buy it in bulk and the cost works out to 7p per 10g. That’s even less than the Tesco own brand which isn’t as nice and still works out to 20p per 10g.
Not a huge saving overall but I just wanted to highlight one of the hundreds of similar deals. If you were to buy more of your staples in bulk then the savings would soon add up – tea, coffee, sugar, laundry detergent, shampoo, toilet rolls and so much more.
I think we’re going to go once a month around Payday to stock up on the things we know we’ll use through the month and try our hardest to resist the temptation of all of the other ‘bargains’. I think I’ll write myself a little note on my hand next time we go…
It’s only a bargain if you need it!
I bought a couple of things this time that weren’t essential but I’ll tell you about that in a special post I have planned for tomorrow which is like the complete opposite of this post. I thought I’d share a couple of frugal fails with you to let you know that I am definitely not a frugal role model all of the time. 😉
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I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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