This may come as a surprise to you (although more than likely not) but I’m not always a shining example of frugal-ness. 😉
I spend so much time on here sharing ways to save money and ideas on how to be frugal and rarely share much of the non-frugal side of my life so I thought I’d start a monthly post to share some of the slightly non-frugal things I’ve done!
This is the second post in my frugal fails series- the first is here if you want to see last month’s frugal fails.
Frugal Fail #1 – A Meal Kit from M&S
This one’s not on me really as I completely planned to make this from scratch as my new recipe for this week but when Mr Frugal saw a beef teriyaki meal kit for £6 in M&S he decided it was fate and bought it thinking he was doing me a favour. 😉
Frugal Fail #2 – Buying cheap
I bought a basketball hoop for Master Frugal a couple of weeks ago as we thought it would help get him outside a bit more. He’s struggling with his iron levels at the moment so is quite tired and lethargic so we bought one as we thought it would tempt him outside a bit more.
It absolutely worked and he’s spent hour after hour out there shooting baskets (or whatever you call it) and it’s done him the world of good. It’s improved his mood as he’s getting fresh air and being more active again, it’s improved his health as he seems to less lethargic and tired all round now and it’s been worth every penny.
Except for the fact that we bought a cheap-ish hoop from Argos (by cheap, I mean £60 which was cheap for hoops like this but still a lot). The hoop has now almost completely snapped off the backboard which may well be because he’s spent so long playing on it but really I would have expected more than three weeks use out of it.
I don’t have the receipt anywhere which is driving me mad so even though I’ve messaged Argos, there’s nothing that they can do. I need to buy a more expensive one now that’s going to last as both Mr Frugal and I agree that we need to replace it as it’s done him so much good. He’s out there for a good 3+ hours every day and I don’t even mind that my grass and plants are pretty much ruined!
Frugal Fail #3 – Didn’t bring the washing in… Again!
I can’t believe that I did this again but I left my washing out again in drizzly rain which meant that when I brought it in, it smelt all must so I had to wash it again.
My rotary drier is similar to this one for those of you who asked me.
Frugal Fail #4 – Tried to get fancy with some reduced price cod
We bought some yellow stickered cod and decided to have a go at making a fancy fish parcel kind of meal in the Instant Pot and I think you’ll agree the resulting meal looks pretty good.
We basically made a little greaseproof paper parcel for the fish to go in and topped it with some chilli and lemon zest, squeezed some lemon on it and closed the parcel up. We cooked it in the Instant Pot and were over the moon with how beautifully the fish was cooked.
But… what this photo doesn’t show is the horrific smell that escaped from the Instant Pot when it was de-pressurising (or whatever it’s called). Honestly, the house smelled like off fish for the rest of the day which was awful. It also doesn’t show how awful the fish tasted – it turns out that both me and Mr Frugal squeezed lemon over the top of the fish so it was really bitter tasting.
Frugal Fail #5 – Got banned from Facebook Marketplace
This one is laughable as I’m not sure what I did wrong but I’m banned permanently now so I can no longer sell on Marketplace – not a huge deal as I rarely use that these days but I’m still annoyed and more than a little baffled.
Basically, I listed some of Miss Frugal’s things on there to sell on her behalf and got a notification that a couple of them were in breach of their guidelines – presumably because they suspected they weren’t original. It was a North Face hoodie and two Pandora rings that they had an issue with but I knew they were original so I appealed as it said I could. They came back within minutes saying my appeal was declined and that I was going to be banned from Marketplace.
There was another option for appeal so I selected that and offered to send more photos to prove they were originals, I even offered to send the items to them (not sure how I would have done that and got them back) as I was so offended by the ban. I got another reply in minutes to say my appeal had been declined and there were no further avenues open to me.
How rude! 😉
So that’s this month’s frugal fails, nothing too shocking I don’t think.
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