Five little things that have saved us money this week {31st July 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.

1) Remember our brilliant bargain of a free electric fire a couple of weeks ago?

It was looking a bit worse for wear when we bought it so we’d planned to give it a bit of TLC with some cast iron restorer,before we installed it but at the time we couldn’t find the tin of restorer paint that we’d bought to restore our dining room fire so we settled for giving it a really thorough clean and I waited patiently for the paint to reappear.

Well, the restorer finally turned up so last weekend I spent an hour of so giving the fire the makeover we’d been planning and it was an hour well spent! I gave it two coats of paint and it genuinely looks like a completely different fire – I actually think it looks like a new fire now and it certainly doesn’t look like a fire we got free from Facebook Marketplace!

It’s actually a Burley fire which my research tells me is a good make of fire with similar models from that company selling for £1000+ and although I know ours is a bit older, it’s absolutely an amazing bargain!

2) When we were sorting through everything we wanted to sell at our car boot sale, I came across an old gold ring that I hadn’t worn in at least five years. It had no sentimental value whatsoever and I couldn’t imagine ever wearing it again, so I decided to sell it for scrap gold. It seemed far better to turn it into cash than leave it sitting at the bottom of a jewellery box gathering dust.

Gold prices are actually pretty high at the moment, with 9ct gold fetching just over £30 per gram when I sold mine. My ring weighed 2g, so after getting an online quote from a reputable gold buyer that I was happy with, I popped it in the post. A few days later, £63 landed in my bank account.

Not bad for something I’d completely forgotten about!

3) We usually buy cheap bedding plants to go in our planters and hanging baskets and last year, we bought some that were three trays for £12 for our hanging baskets which was a real bargain considering they lasted most of the Summer and looked amazing for a good few months…

We did the same again this year but they didn’t even last until mid-July this year, maybe because of the heat but we did keep them well watered so I would have hoped they would have lasted a bit longer. 

Anyway, for whatever reason, they didn’t make it and the tubs needed sorting! 

We decided to go for an evergreen plant rather than bedding plants so we could hopefully plant these planters once more and then sit back and enjoy them. Last week, I spotted some small lavender plants at Lidl that were £4.99 for six so I decided to take a chance and hope that the fact they were super cheap compared to other lavender plants that we’ve seen. 

I put three in each pot and they’re now pride of place either side of my front door. 

If they last, it will be a good little save. 

4) This week, I’ve made myself lunch twice using some of the things we’ve grown in the garden. 

It’s nothing flash but I added home grown rocket, tomatoes and sliced sugar snap peas to some couscous with some sliced shredded chicken, cucumber and some half wilted spring onions from the fridge and I had a lovely tasty lunch for next to nothing two days running. 

I use all sorts to flavour my couscous so even though I had the same lunch two days running, it didn’t taste the same. 😁

I do love using things we’ve grown even though it only made up a small part of the dish!

The couscous is pretty cheap though as I buy a bag of wholewheat couscous from M&S for £1.50 and that does about 10 days as I only use 50g dried couscous at a time so per portion its about 15p. I’d love to use more but I try and keep my carbs under control so I don’t have a spike in my blood glucose mid afternoon. 

We always have cucumber in the fridge and the shredded chicken is something we always have in the freezer as I cook it in bulk and portion it up whenever I see chicken breasts in the reduced section so it’s not a bad bargain lunch. 

5) We’ve made a start clearing out our garage this week and we were pretty ruthless with what we kept and what we got rid of as we seem to have years of my partner’s hoarding to content with. He’s very much of the ‘keep it in case we ever need to use it’ mindset and that shows in the collection of random things we have in there along with the usual. 

We listed a good few items on Facebook Marketplace including a tyre that was the wrong size for any of our cars, a 10 litre tub of paint that we’d used a small amount of, some tools, a light fitting and some other random bits. We listed them for less than other similar listings were charging as we were selling them to make space more than for the money if that makes sense.

You have no idea how much excitement this tub of paint on Marketplace. 😁

And that’s pretty much it for this week!

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