Five Frugal Things we did this week {2nd August 2025}….

Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during the previous 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! 👐 

How on earth is it August already?

We’ve been getting ready for our hols this week but still had time to fit in plenty of money saving!

1) Last weekend, I made a big pot of corned beef hash which always goes down well in this house. 😁

Corned beef seems to be super expensive these days – I’m sure I remember it being a cheap option when I was growing up but these days it’s upwards of £3 a tin and seeing as I usually use two tins when I cook this, it could really easily be an expensive meal.  We have a Farm Foods shop near us sometimes has deals on so a couple of weeks ago we bought a few cans at £2.15 a can which is a good bit cheaper than the usual price. 

It’s not a very photogenic meal, is it? 

I chop up potatoes, slice up some carrots and add in the two tins of corned beef and leave it in the slow cooker overnight. 

The next day, I generally add in peas and sometimes cauliflower if I have some in but last weekend, I just kept it super basic as I had a busy day on Sunday so I portioned it up on Sunday morning before I went out Strawberry picking with the kids. 

These are the chilled portions that were left when I came home – one had been heated up and eaten so there was just the four left when I came home. 

Even though this time around, this meal was cheaper than usual due to the reduced corned beef, I do still make this when there are no deals on corned beef though as we do enjoy it and it easily does 4-5 good sized portions so it’s still value for money – it does night shift packed lunches so even at £8 for the full slow cooker full, it still works out and under £2 a portion which is still pretty cheap considering how filling it is and how comparable it would be to most other packed lunch meals suitable for a 12 hour shift of manual work. 

2) The reason I was busy on Sunday? These two wanted to go strawberry picking. 🍓

It costs £4 each to get into the farm but you get the full entry price back to redeem against the fruit you pick. 

We had so much fun and came away with what feels like a huge amount of strawberries. The kids have smoothies pretty much every day so we went back to my house and chopped up all the strawberries ready for them to freeze for their daily smoothies which will save them a fortune. 

I try not to drink smoothies as they’re not really recommended for diabetics so I was happy to let them have all the savings from this one. 

I did keep a few back for some strawberry muffins though, we had a couple when they were fresh but the rest are in the freezer ready for when we want them. I actually think they would be nice with some icing on them like a cupcake rather than a muffin so I think that’s probably what I’ll do with them. 

3) Are we old if we have a loyalty card for our local garden centre?

We signed up for the loyalty card when they had a rewards weekend for their members a few months ago. It cost £15 for the year but it was absolutely worth it on the day as everything we were buying was on offer with the loyalty card so we saved more than it cost. 

We got buy one get one free (or buy two get one free) on the plants we were buying for our hanging baskets which saved us £7 ish I think from memory. 

There was also a discount on the tomato plants and the vegetable trug that we were buying as well as something off the lighting that we wanted which took our savings up to over the £15 cost of the annual card so we bought it and saved the money on the day. 

The members event just happened to be on over the weekend that we visited so it was great timing albeit unintentionally. 

Anyway, fast forward to this week and we made the most of our membership card with the two free drinks that we get a month in the cafe which is lovely. We popped along in my lunch on Monday to get July’s free drinks and had a relaxing sit down planning our holiday next week. 

3) Next up is my biggest Too Good To Go win to date! 

And it actually started while we were sat in the garden centre enjoying our free drinks. As we were sat, we thought we’d have a look and see if there was anything on the app and we found a couple of bags available in Subway right near where we were. 

We ordered two bags – one bread and cookies bag and one snack bag, totalling £7 for the two bags. 

We got there and the lady apologised and said the bags had been cancelled as they didn’t have enough food leftover which is fine although more notice would have been great as she had literally cancelled it while we were stood in the shop. 

I get that it’s not her fault so when she said that she’d had to cancel, I just thanked her and told her that I hoped she enjoyed the rest of the day and that I hoped she could at least finish early if they’d ran out of food. 

She thanked me and then said that seeing as I was so understanding, she would make something up for me just so I hadn’t had a completely wasted trip. 

When you look at our haul below, bear in mind that she’d already cancelled the bags which meant the charges had been reversed in my bank so I had paid nothing at all at this point. 

Look at all that! Four foot long subs, three portions of meatballs, eight cookies, a portion of criss crosses and a portion of nacho chicken bites. And it cost absolutely nothing which really proves that kindness does pay. 

4) We’re away next week and hoping to be having lots of picnics in the sunshine but because we’re flying, we can’t take our usual cool box and the bag we have is a bit big to pack. 

I bought this one from Tesco this week for £4.

It’s an insulated bag for life which folds flat so will be an ideal little cool bag for packed lunches and picnics while we’re away next week. 

5) Remember this Bureau from my old house.

I bought it from Facebook Marketplace for £50 and it was one of my most treasured pieces of furniture although I did pay a lovely upcycling expert to paint it cream and make it look all shabby chic.

This week, I’ve been over to the house and started to empty the cabinet and find new homes for everything in it as I want it back. I love it and want it in my house where I can appreciate it rather than it just being a dumping ground for things that don’t otherwise have a place to live. 

I did have a good search on Facebook and couldn’t find anything I liked as much without paying a fortune so I reclaimed this one and I couldn’t be happier! 

Next up might be my little Orla Kiely shelves… 😁

Hope you’ve had a good week and saved yourself lots of money!

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