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.

1) Last weekend, we started the day sat in the garden, enjoying the sunshine before it got too hot for me. 🌞

Somehow, that turned into ripping out a half-dead bush that had completely taken over one corner of the garden. It was enormous, full of weeds underneath and constantly battling with our St John’s Wort, which is absolutely living its best life and taking down anything that dares grow too close. 😂

I can’t even be mad at it though because it’s looking gorgeous right now with all of its bright yellow flowers.

The area to the right of the bin is what we cleared. The photo doesn’t really do it justice as it’s about 12 feet from the bin to the fence and, until that morning, it was completely filled by the overgrown bush. Once we’d pulled that out, we discovered an equally delightful collection of weeds and random twiggy plants hiding underneath that our ancient strimmer just couldn’t cope with.

We needed reinforcements, so we rang our local tool hire company. They had an all-singing, all-dancing industrial strimmer they promised would tackle the lot for £30 for half a day. We actually thought that sounded pretty reasonable.

Then laziness kicked in. 😆 It was a hot day and neither of us really fancied spending the afternoon wrestling with an industrial strimmer, so I popped a post in our village Facebook group asking if anyone local would be interested in doing it for us instead.

Within minutes, someone got in touch. He’d started a gardening business a few months ago and said he’d come round within the hour. Not only did he strim the whole area we’d cleared, but he also offered to strim the rest of the garden, trim our other bushes and take away all the garden waste, including the huge bush we’d already dug out, all for £30.

Considering we’d have paid that just to hire the strimmer ourselves, it felt like an absolute bargain.

We didn’t actually spend any less money, but we got so much more value for it. Sometimes saving money isn’t about spending the least possible amount—it’s about getting the best value for what you spend, and this definitely felt like one of those times.

2) Last garden one for today, I promise!

We have more rhubarb growing and it’s growing really well which would be lovely if either of us liked it. 

We never got round to digging the plant up and rehoming it in our friends allotment back in May when we swapped loads of rhubarb for tomato plants. We still plan to do that but in the meantime, when we offered more rhubarb to him, he declined as he was still working his way through the last lot that was apparently cooked and frozen.

So we put it on Facebook, again in our local village group to see if anyone wanted some free rhubarb. I found a home for it, after declining a request to ask if I could deliver it to someone in a town 20 miles away, and was over the moon when the man came to collect it and brought us a cucumber plant as a swap. 

Now if only I can keep the cucumber plant alive! 

3) I think I’ve mentioned a few times in my monthly pre-loved finds posts that I have a bit of a Ringtons obsession. 😁

I loved being at my Nana’s house when the Ringtons man came round and, even now, anything Ringtons-related makes me smile. I’ve gradually started a little collection of tins, but until now I’d struggled to think of anything particularly useful to do with them.

This week, though, I turned one into a string holder.

We made a small hole in the lid with a nail, popped a roll of string inside and threaded the end through the hole. It’s one of those ridiculously simple ideas that makes you wonder why you didn’t think of it sooner.

The blue cord you can see is actually strimmer line. We’d bought it cheaply from Home Bargains, but it turned out it wouldn’t feed properly through our strimmer. Rather than throw it away, we thought we’d keep it to see if we could find another use for it, and it turns out it works perfectly stored in here too.

It’s such a simple little project, but it means one of my favourite tins is actually useful rather than just sitting on a shelf looking pretty, which feels like a win to me. 😊

4) This one’s a bit of a cheeky one because it hasn’t actually saved me any money, but it has given me a bit more breathing room in this month’s budget, so I’m counting it as a win. 😁

My car payment normally comes out on the 20th of each month, which is a couple of days before payday. It’s never really been a problem because I always put the money aside, but I’ve always thought it would make much more sense if it came out on payday with the rest of my bills.

So, in my lunch break this week, I gave Audi a call to see if I could move the payment date to the 23rd. They were more than happy to do it and confirmed the change would take effect straight away.

My last payment came out on 20th June, before my June payday, and my next payment won’t now be until 23rd July, which is after my next payday.

It doesn’t mean I’ve paid any less overall, but it does mean I don’t have a car payment coming out of this month’s wages. That leaves me with that money available in this month’s budget, which I can put towards something else before the payment resumes next month. It’s a nice little cash flow win that cost nothing more than a five-minute phone call.

5) And a nice easy one to end with today – I took my lunch to work this week after being stung with paying £6 for a sandwich and a can of Pepsi Max a couple of weeks ago. It was just some picky bits leftovers and my Stanley cup filled with juice but it did the job and cost me nothing. 

There you go, that’s this week’s update. Same time, next week?

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