Five Frugal Things we did this week {24th April 2026}….

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!

It’s been a good while since I’ve shared these posts weekly and I’ve properly missed it, especially as so much has been going on in my life while I’ve been away from my laptop. 

Miss Frugal was a good little blog caretaker for me while I wasn’t very well – replying to emails, sharing some posts from the archives and updating and sharing a few posts that I had tucked away in my drafts – which meant that I didn’t have to think about opening my laptop while I wasn’t very well. 

The main symptoms I had when I was waiting for my surgery was nausea and exhaustion so I just didn’t have the energy to do very much in the months leading up to my surgery but during that time, we had a really stressful house sale that looked as though it was about to fall through at any point and then finally, a move to our dream house which is a renovation project. 

You can imagine how much I wanted to just open my laptop and start typing, can’t you?

This website was an outlet for me when my Mam and brother died when I had two children under two and I used it as a way to record our family life and to hold myself accountable for saving money where I could at a time when every penny really counted. It became a habit and part of my life so even now, when more and more people are becoming professional ‘influencers’ on social networks like Instagram and TikTok, I’m still here. 😁

So… I’ve had my surgery and after a few issues with my recovery, I feel like a new woman! I’ll tell you more one of these days but for now, let’s start with getting back into these posts. 

1) I love flowers and one thing I was really looking forward to when we moved into this house was filling our garden with colourful flowers. I started last week with some pots of flowers either side of the front door.

We’ve re-used a lot of things that we found in the garden when we moved in – the terracotta pots that our plants are in were two of many left down the side of the house. The stone animals were all randomly under bushes all over the place and the stone planter that the hydrangea is in was filled with sand and had been used as a base to launch fireworks by the looks of it.

They’re all a bit battered and have definitely seen better days but I love them and think they look just perfect in our garden. 

The plants we bought were quite cheap – I think we bought three packs of bedding plants for £12 and that was enough to fill both planters. I went with a mainly yellow theme to go with the front of the house but added a few purple and orange plants in to add a bit more colour. 

I don’t know how long they will last looking as good as they do right now but I’m over the moon with them for the bargain amount of £12 – especially when the ready made pots and hanging baskets that we were looking at originally were more than double the price for much smaller arrangements. 

2) When we moved in, there were two doorbells on the front door, neither or which worked.

Inside the hall, we found an old 1970s Friedland door chime which, when we opened it up, had the original card inside listing all of the tunes you could choose from…

I was a bit sad that it wasn’t working and said as much to my partner who then spent the next hour trying to figure out which of the doorbells the chime was connected to and thinking of ways he could fix it. We randomly had some electrical cable in the garage from when we installed some lights in our old house so he did some fancy cutting and reconnecting of wires and a bit of drilling and I heard the very loud, very cheesy tones of Jingle Bells throughout the house.

He managed to fix it! 

This is my doorbell although the door frame needs a bit of a retouch where the other doorbell was removed and I am so happy with it. It’s a big house and this doorbell is loud enough that you can hear it clearly in every room of the house – I definitely won’t be missing any Amazon deliveries in future!

This just isn’t a Ring Doorbell kind of house so for now, we’re going with the old fashioned doorbell which I love. 

3) I know I said I hadn’t had much chance to do too much gardening but I have managed to plant a few bits outside in my planter and pots. 

I have some tomato plants, mint, radish, rocket and some sugar snap peas growing outside under our dining room bay window and inside, I’m growing basil and peppers from seed which will be ready to go outside shortly. It’s all low effort but I just wanted to get something going. 

4) I wanted a window seat for our dining room bay window, preferably one with storage but as there’s so many other things that need our attention in this house, I thought my visions for this space in the house were going to have to wait for a while. 

Until I found a sad looking storage bench in our local charity shop for £10 and although I can’t find my before pictures, I can tell you it was scratched up with a grey stained fabric on the cushion. 

I painted it using a Farrow and Ball ‘Railings’ tester pot and ordered a small piece of William Morris upholstery fabric to match my curtains and I replaced the fabric using a staple gun to secure it. 

I tidied it up with a piece of black velvet ribbon to cover the edges and I think it looks brilliant in the bay window space. 

5) We needed to replace the flooring in our kitchen and utility room pretty quickly after we moved in as it wasn’t in good condition at all but we couldn’t decide what we wanted and kept changing our minds between wood and tiles. 

We needed quite a lot as the kitchen is 4.5x4m and the utility room is 3x3m so in the end, rather than spend a fortune on something we weren’t sure of, we decided to go with lino and replace it when we get around to refitting the kitchen which won’t be for a few years yet. 

To save money, we went to our local flooring shop and managed to buy two roll ends in the same design for about half the price that it would have cost if we’d picked one from the shop floor. It wasn’t our first choice of flooring but it was a great price for the best quality we could get so we went for it although I must admit that when we walked out of the shop, I did have a moment thinking we’d made a mistake. 

As soon as I saw it down, I knew it was a good choice and it looks great. 😁

And as an added bonus, our lovely fitter suggested that we use some of the leftover lino upstairs in the small bathroom which had carpet down when we moved in and I’m so pleased he did as it’s made a huge difference to that room which we’re in the middle of decorating. 

There you go, hope you enjoyed seeing what I’ve been getting up to this week in the new house!

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