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.
Hey! 👐
1) What’s the best way to use up some over-ripe bananas and slightly squidgy raspberries that are definitely past their best?
The answer is obviously muffins. 😇
So last week when I discovered some brown bananas in our fruit bowl last Saturday morning, I mashed them up and started making some banana muffins using my one size fits all muffin recipe. I opened up the fridge to get an egg out and noticed half a pack of raspberries that had been forgotten about and decided to add them into the mix too.
2) And aside from my cheeky use-it-up muffins, I’ve also dusted off my breadmaker and made a couple of loaves of bread this week!
This one does look a little bit anaemic as I had the wrong setting of for the crust but it still tasted amazing. 😁
Here’s the recipe we use for homemade bread every time we make it – it’s never failed us yet (as long as I get the settings right on the breadmaker).
3) I’ve been working from home a lot more lately which definitely has its pros and cons for me personally but a huge pro has got to be the money I save every day that I work from home.
My journey is just short of 40 miles each way at the moment so during a normal working week, I’d drive 80 miles a day over 5 days (sometimes 6) which obviously adds up from a paying for petrol perspective even in my little fiat. I’m not really a work from home kind of person unless I have to be but I have switched to working from home 3 days a week with just a couple of days in the office which is saving me more than £100 a month.
Another huge plus to working from home is this guy – who literally sits on the bed near my desk all day long.
4) We’ve always had a window-cleaner who’d come and wash the outside of our windows and the frames every 3-4 weeks but earlier in the year, we decided that we weren’t going to pay someone else to do it as they really weren’t doing a very good job.
Now I do my own using my homemade window cleaner which takes no time at all and I genuinely think the upstairs windows look better after a super quick clean from me than they did when we paid someone to come and do it for us.
And who knew that some windows had the option to be opened in a way that made window cleaning easier? Not me until a couple of weeks ago. 😂
5) I know I’ve talked about Intentional Spending before (more than once to be fair) but basically, it’s all about being careful with your spending in one area to be able to buy the things that make you happy in another. Can you tell I’m building up to telling you about a big spend haha.
I needed to buy a new mascara at the weekend as my last one (bought super cheap from Sephora when we went to New York last Christmas) has finally run out so I popped onto the Boots website where I could buy my favourite Dior mascara and get my Advantage points at the same time. I saw they had an offer on where you got a free Dior little bag if you bought two Dior products and I just thought I’d have a quick check to see if they had my favourite lip gloss – they did!
So I added that to my basket too and the total payable shot up to an eyewatering amount but…
I got a pop up from the Honey Chrome extension telling me it had found 8 potential discount codes so I set it away working through the codes and seeing if it could beat the price in my basket. 30 seconds later, my basket had reduced by £5.60 which was a good saving.
I then made sure I’d loaded any applicable offers onto my Advantage card (I hate that you have to load the offers rather than them just being applied automatically) so I got lots of bonus points making my total points earned on the purchase 600 (worth £6.00).
I get that an expensive mascara and lip gloss purchase isn’t frugal but my mascara lasts a good 6-9 months so a splurge feels like less of a splurge when I consider how long it lasts and how many uses I get and my lip gloss was paid for easily enough with the petrol savings from working at home this week. I got a free Dior bag, made a saving of £5.60 off the total price and got 600 points with my purchase so I guess my point is that spending a bit extra is fine every now and again as long as you make sure you’re getting the most you possibly can for your money.
Come over and join our fab Facebook group – Spend Less, Live Better! We’ve almost hit 35,000 members in the group now so it’s a great place to be
As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing anything you’ve done that’s been thrifty or frugal from your week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the Frugal Friday linky at the bottom of this post.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with the five frugal things linky by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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. 😉
