Every now and again (used to be weekly ;-), maybe it will be again) 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! 👐
1) Ah, remember the good old days when I used to start lots of these posts with some bargain flowers? Well, I have some to share with you today…
I picked up these pretty little daffs earlier this week reduced to 40p as they were looking a bit worse for wear. I took out the dead ones which clearly were past the point of no return and put the rest in a vase (I actually don’t have a vase here so this is actually a mason jar drinks glass) and hoped for the best.
The next morning, I woke up to a nice little display of six out of the eight buds having opened up ready to brighten up my morning. 🌞
2) Did you know you could get money back for your old car battery?
Miss Frugal’s car battery needed replacing this week which we did for her. We shopped around for the best price for her new battery and then headed over to fit it for her (and by ‘we’ I mean, I was there and supervised. 😁) which didn’t take too long thankfully as it was freezing.
We took her old battery and on the way home, stopped in at a scrap metal yard on the way home and got £8.50 back for it and yes, I did keep the money seeing as we’d bought her new one for her.
It was super easy to do and the £8.50 made it worth the two minute detour on our journey home.
I know not many of us can fit a new car battery ourselves or have a partner who can do it in his sleep but even so, when you get a car battery fitted at a garage, ask them if you can have the old one back and take it to a metal scrap yard yourself. It’s only what they will do with it and the money is better in your pocket, right?
3) I think this one will make you smile a little bit.
We often take our little Freelander to do a bit of off-roading just for fun and we’ve been getting to know the local green lanes where off-roaders are welcome. It’s really important to us to only go to areas like this and this week we made friends with someone who told us about a track which was specifically designed for off roading. We headed along and it most definitely was designed for off roading.
The entrance is by a council site so we stopped off to talk to a council worker before heading up the lane and they confirmed it was currently ‘dead land’ to them so they were happy for off roaders to use it until that changed.
We were the only car on the track and we had fun for the first part but then it got a bit hairy for our car so we stopped and we got out and and walked around the next part of the course to check how big the dips were and how deep the puddles were before we decided whether to continue driving. Again, by ‘we’ I mean I was there and supervised although this time I stayed in the car to supervise. 😁
It was a bit much for us so we decided to turn around without tackling the rest of the course – we would have definitely done damage to the car if we’d have continued and taken a chance. So by being careful and doing a walk around, we saved ourselves damptions is alage to the car.
Also, it was a pretty cheap date day which was an added bonus!
4) This popped up in my Facebook feed this week – 1o items for £10 from Iceland. It looked like it was some good things to keep in the freezer for quick kids teas so we popped to our local Iceland with the intention of stocking up.
It shouldn’t have surprised us that most of the items in the picture of the advert had been snapped up – we still managed to spend £20 and save over £40 with what we did buy and we’re now fully stocked with daft tea bits for a good while. I do still like to cook for us all rather than do freezer teas when the kids are here but there are nights when there’s just not enough time in the day so having quick tea options is a definite winner.
I did then take Master Frugal to the shop nearest to where he is and managed to stock up his freezer too. There was more available in his store than in ours and he’s definitely one for quick freezer teas most of the time so he was over the moon.
5) How cold has it been this week?
We were out this week when I got a call from Master Frugal to say his boiler had gone off and he was freezing! It was the day when the temperatures were -4 at one point so we suspected it was to do with frozen pipes but without being there it was difficult to diagnose and fix.
This was the photo that he sent us at the same time as telling us that he could see his breath as it was that cold!
Luckily, I remembered getting a text earlier in the day from British Gas which was a warning that they were expecting lots of people’s pipes to be frozen over the next few days so I was able to go back to the text, follow the link (to this page if you’re interested) and let him know what to do to get the pipes un-frozen. We (again, not me but I held the phone) were then able to talk him through resetting the boiler so heat could be restored.
I was an hour and a half away from him at that time so being able to help him over the phone was amazing and it stopped me from panicking and calling an engineer. I know this is common sense but in the past, I think I would have been so convinced that I couldn’t sort something as complicated as a boiler. 😁
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 and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later!
