Five little things that have saved us money this week {18th September 2026}….

Every week I share five small things we’ve done to save a bit of money, make life easier or help us spend more intentionally.

None of them are usually huge on their own, but that’s kind of the point. Those small choices add up over time and give us more room for the things that really matter — whether that’s days out, holidays, home projects, treats we’ll actually enjoy or just a bit more breathing space in the budget.

It’s time for another Five Money-Saving Things I’ve Done This Week and I feel like there’s a bit of everything in this week’s five.

I’ve got my usual bargain flowers (I genuinely think there would be something wrong if I went a whole month without reduced flowers appearing in one of these posts 😂), a decorating mistake that actually worked out better than our original plan and some serious September stocking up.

I’ve also been using up some of the fruit we had in the kitchen and garden and, whether we’re ready for it or not, I’ve started thinking about Christmas.

Here’s what I’ve been up to…

A bunch of bargain sunflowers!

Reduced flowers are a regular feature in these posts and this week I found a bunch of sunflowers for £3, which obviously came home with me and went straight into one of my jugs.

I know this is a bit silly but there are some flowers I enjoy more than others because they just feel more ‘natural’ to me. Sunflowers and tulips are probably my favourites – I love that you can just plonk them in a jug and they look beautiful without looking too perfect.

Roses, on the other hand, always feel a bit ‘try hard’ to me and I very rarely buy a bunch that has roses in it. Which is actually quite odd considering I’m currently on the lookout for a few rose bushes for the garden. Clearly garden roses and vase roses are completely different things in my head. 😂

And don’t even get me started on flowers that have been dyed some random unnatural colour. I don’t care how reduced they are, they’re staying right there.

Anyway, back to my £3 sunflowers. They’re exactly my kind of flowers, they look lovely in my jug and they’re making me smile every time I see them. Three pounds well spent.

A happy little decorating mistake

We’ve been talking about painting the picture rail in our dining room pretty much since we moved in. There was an ugly green stripe above it when we bought the house which we got rid of straight away, and our plan was always to paint the picture rail the same colour as the fireplace, which is Farrow & Ball Dimity. We thought it would look lovely against the Dead Salmon walls and break the colour up a little bit.

We also knew it was going to be a right faff, which is exactly why we’ve been putting it off for months. 😂 Last week we finally decided to just get on with it, so I dug the paint out of the garage for my partner while he got himself all ready with his masking tape and paintbrush.

He took one swipe with the paintbrush and immediately realised I’d given him the wrong tin. Instead of Dimity, I’d managed to give him the Dead Salmon that was already on the walls.

It turned out to be a very happy mistake though because we stood looking at the tinybit he’d painted and realised that we actually really liked the picture rail blending into the walls rather than standing out. There’s already enough drama going on in that room with the original fireplace, the ridiculously big table and the built-in cupboard, so having the picture rail all the same colour actually works really well.

So the job continued with my accidentally chosen paint and, even better, it means we haven’t used any of the Dimity that I’d originally planned to use on the picture rail. There’s now enough of that left to paint the old built-in cupboard in the corner, which is another job we’ve been planning to do.

I did still want to make a little bit of a feature of the picture rail though, so we used some old-fashioned picture rail hooks to hang a cheeky little sign that I found in a charity shop for £2 above the doorway into the kitchen.

Eventually, I want some black wire writing hanging there – preferably something that says ‘Gather’ – but everything I’ve found that looks how I want it to look would need to be custom made and I don’t want to pay custom-made prices right now. My £2 charity shop sign can happily live there until I stumble across the right thing at the right price.

So one wrong tin of paint gave us a picture rail that we actually prefer, saved the Dimity for another little makeover and finally got my £2 charity shop sign up on the wall. Not bad for a mistake. 😂

I made a fruit compote from bits that needed using up

I had some plums and apples that needed using up this week, along with the last handful of blackberries that I’d picked, so I decided to turn the whole lot into a fruit compote for breakfasts.

I chopped the apples and plums up and added them to a pan with the blackberries, a splash of water and some fresh ginger. The ginger was actually left over from making my rhubarb and ginger vodka, so I was quite pleased to find another use for that too. I’ll link to that little experiment here because I’m very much looking forward to seeing how that turns out. 😂

I cooked everything gently until the fruit was lovely and soft and starting to break down. I only added a tiny bit of sugar because I want to use the compote with yoghurt and porridge, so I didn’t want to turn perfectly healthy fruit into something loaded with added sugar.

It made a surprisingly good amount and there’s more than I’ll use while it’s fresh, so I’ve portioned the rest into one of my large silicone ice cube moulds to freeze. Once they’re solid, I’ll pop them out and keep them in a freezer bag so I can just take out one portion at a time whenever I fancy it.

I love things like this because I’ve used the last of my picked blackberries, some fruit that needed using and even the leftover ginger from another recipe. And I’ve ended up with a freezer stash of something that will make a bowl of yoghurt or porridge much more interesting for the next few weeks.

I’ve started my Christmas cupboard

I know it’s only September but I’ve officially started my Christmas cupboard. Well, technically it’s two boxes in the Kallax units in our utility room, but calling it my Christmas cupboard sounds much nicer. 😂

I’ve also cleared one drawer in the freezer ready to start filling with Christmas goodies over the next few months.

We don’t actually spend a huge amount extra on our Christmas food shop, but there are always a few things we buy at Christmas that we wouldn’t normally have in. Drinks, snacks, picky bits and all those little extras that can make the December food shop creep up in price.

So this year I’m picking up one Christmas thing each week when I do the shopping and putting it straight into the Christmas stash. So far we have some bottles of J20 and some posh nuts, so we’re off to a suitably sophisticated start. 😂 As we get closer to Christmas, I’ll start adding things to the freezer drawer too.

I’ve also been saving the bits and pieces we’ve built up on our supermarket loyalty cards. I’ve got a couple of £5 vouchers on my Morrisons More card, £30-something on Asda Rewards and about £15 in Tesco Clubcard vouchers at the moment. I’ll keep building those up between now and Christmas and use them for some of the extra spending.

We don’t usually use our Tesco vouchers for the Christmas food shop though. We have a little tradition of using them for a meal out just before the chaos of Christmas properly starts. Some of the Clubcard Reward Partners let you swap your vouchers for three times their value, so our £15 would be worth £45 towards a meal if we use it with one of those.

Last year we went to Pizza Express, which was OK, but I think we’ll try Frankie & Benny’s this year if it’s still included in the triple-value Clubcard rewards when we come to book.

Between putting one thing away each week, filling the freezer gradually and saving our loyalty rewards, hopefully most of those little Christmas extras will be sorted before December even gets here.

I got a head start on a bigger Christmas present

I’m sorry for mentioning Christmas twice this week.

I’ve been picking up little bits for Christmas for a while now, but this week I ticked off one of Miss Frugal’s bigger presents after a trip to the perfume counter turned into a bit of an offer-stacking marathon.

What started with 20% off somehow ended up with a 3-for-2 offer, an even bigger online discount, extra Boots Advantage points, a free gift and 6% TopCashback. I ended up paying £156.60 for £300 worth of perfume, with around £8 in Boots points and the cashback still to come.

Because we save for Christmas throughout the year using Plum, I could just transfer the money from our Christmas savings and take advantage of all the offers while they were available rather than waiting until December and potentially paying much more.

There’s a whole story behind this one — including me trying to identify a perfume using nothing more helpful than “orange bottle and fruity” — so I’ve written a separate post all about how the various offers stacked together and what happened to all three bottles. 😁

So that’s this week’s five.

I’ve got enough pens to last me until next September, the beginnings of a Christmas stash, some homemade fruit compote in the freezer and a dining room picture rail that looks better thanks to me handing my partner the wrong tin of paint. And obviously, I have a £3 jug of sunflowers making me happy every time I walk past them.

Not a bad week at all.

If you don’t want to miss future posts, you can add your email address to the subscribe box on this page and new posts will land straight in your inbox. You can also follow along over on my Facebook page or on Pinterest for more money-saving ideas, recipes, family life and everything else I share on Frugal Family.

And if you’re looking for some extra meal planning inspiration, you’ll find me over on my other blog, Meal Planning Made Easy, where I share simple meal plans, family-friendly recipes and plenty of ideas to make feeding everyone that little bit easier.

Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.