Five little things that have saved us money this week {2nd October 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 this week’s Five Money-Saving Things, and I genuinely don’t know where this week has gone. It feels like five minutes since I was writing last week’s post and somehow here we are again.

We put our secondary glazing back up

Our house still has its original sash windows and, as much as I love them, they definitely need some love. Having them properly restored is on our list, but it’s not a cheap job so we’re saving up for it rather than rushing into anything.

We have secondary glazing fitted inside the windows and at the start of summer we took the second layer down so we could actually open the windows and enjoy some fresh air. Now cosy season is here, we’ve put them all back up ready for the colder weather.

I won’t pretend I love them because I really don’t. I don’t particularly like how they look and they make cleaning the windows so much harder, but they make such a difference to how warm the house feels that they’re staying put for winter.

Hopefully one day we’ll get the sash windows restored and won’t need to rely on them quite so much, but for this winter they’re one of the easiest ways we have to keep more of the heat inside the house without spending anything at all.

I turned some reduced mince into two meals

I popped into M&S for a few bits this week and spotted a big pack of mince reduced, so obviously that came home with me. It felt like perfect timing too because the weather is definitely starting to make me want proper comfort food again.

I used it to make mince and dumplings for tea, which is one of those meals that just feels right when the nights start getting darker, and I made enough mince to have some left over for the next day.

Rather than just reheating the leftovers, I turned them into a mince pie for my partner’s packed lunch. So one reduced pack of mince gave us a lovely cosy tea and sorted his lunch for work the following day too. That’s my favourite kind of yellow-sticker bargain — something I would have bought and used anyway, just for less money.

We put our dartboard back up

We had a dartboard up in our old house and it was surprisingly popular. It lived in a big case on the wall in our dining room and didn’t go with the room in any way, but we had so much fun playing darts that we didn’t really care.

I’m not particularly a darts fan, but I love anything that gets everyone together doing something, so I’ve always enjoyed having it. Since we moved, we’ve been debating what to do with it because it goes with this house even less than it did the old one, but this weekend we finally decided just to put it back up.

We’ve put the dartboard on the back of the dining room door, so you can’t even see it most of the time. When we want to play, we just close the door and the darts are kept in the cupboard right next to it. You’d be surprised how much it’s already been used since we put it up at the weekend.

We took it out of the big case before we hung it so it’s much less in your face, which also left us with a case we didn’t need anymore. I popped that on Facebook Marketplace for £10 on Sunday afternoon and it was sold by Tuesday afternoon.

So we’ve brought back something we used to have loads of fun with, found a way to make it work in this house without spoiling the room and made £10 from the bit we didn’t need. Not bad for something that’s been sitting around since we moved. 😁

I made Master Frugal’s Christmas budget stretch a bit further

The kids both have a budget for Christmas which they know and now they’re older they can pretty much choose what they want me to spend it on. It works really well for us as I know I’m buying things they actually want and there’s no money wasted on random presents just for the sake of having more to open.

Master Frugal has wanted a Ninja Creami for ages so that’s one of the things he’s asked for this year and I managed to find a bundle deal which made it a bit better value. I signed up for their emails before I ordered which got me another 15% off and then I paid through Sprive to get another 0.6% cashback.

The Sprive cashback isn’t loads but I was buying it anyway so I might as well get it and every little saving means their Christmas budget goes that little bit further. If I save £20 or £30 on something they’ve asked for then that’s £20 or £30 still left in their budget for something else.

And I don’t need to worry about Master Frugal reading this and finding out what he’s getting because he’s the one who asked for it in the first place. 😂

I stocked up on stationery for the year

When Miss Frugal was younger, she used to make me get up ridiculously early on Boxing Day to go to the Lush sale. The plan was to buy enough half-price bath bombs to last her practically the whole year because everything was reduced to half price or less.

Well, this is basically the stationery version of that. 😂

Every year, a few weeks after the schools have gone back, all the stationery that was piled high for the back-to-school rush starts getting massively reduced. That’s when I stock up on the things I know I’ll use throughout the year – notebooks, pens, pencils and whatever other random useful bits I spot.

So this week I did exactly that, and I now have enough ballpoint pens that I shouldn’t need to buy another one until this time next year.

I go through pens like mad. I always have loads in my bag and I quite often hand them out in meetings at work when I want people to take notes and they haven’t brought a pen. I much prefer people taking notes with a pen and paper rather than sitting behind a laptop where it’s far too easy to get distracted by emails, messages and everything else that’s going on.

And I’m just as bad with notebooks. I fill pages every day with notes, lists, ideas and things I need to remember, so I can get through notebooks ridiculously quickly.

It means there’s absolutely no point in me paying full price for stationery throughout the year when I know there’s a point every September when shops are practically begging me to take it off their hands. I stock up while it’s cheap, stick it away and gradually work my way through it until it’s time to do the same thing again next year.

It’s basically my own personal Boxing Day Lush sale – just with considerably fewer bath bombs and a ridiculous number of ballpoint pens. 😂

I do love sitting down to write these posts though because it always reminds me that even in a completely normal week, there are usually plenty of little things we’ve done that have saved us some money without really feeling like we’ve made much effort at all.

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