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! 👐
1) I’ve had some cucumber plants donated to my growing collection of plants in our back garden. 😁
That means we have tomato plants, chilli, rocket, strawberries as well as cucumbers in various pots and planters which I love as it’s a corner of green in a garden with no grass. I’m excited for all the home grown food we’re going to have this Summer – and by ‘all the home grown food’, I genuinely know there’s going to be very little from the plants we have but it’s a good start.
Next year, I’ll plan more in advance and try and grow a bit more if this year’s plants do as well as I hope.
2) I have no idea what’s happening with my blood glucose levels at the moment – I had a free trial for a glucose monitor (the ones that stick in your arm and do automatic readings) a little while back to help me understand what spikes my bloods but it wasn’t accurate at all when I compared the numbers with the finger prick tests that I did, they weren’t even close.
I was so frustrated that I took out the monitor and just left it at that.
This last couple of weeks though, I’ve had some unexplained high points when doing my finger prick tests and I really wanted to get to the bottom of it so I called the company who offer the free trials and explained the situation.
They were so lovely and agreed to send me another monitor which is amazing as I didn’t want to buy one unless I knew it was going to work and I wouldn’t have bought one after the last trial as I had no faith that one would work for me.
I now have the new monitor in my arm and it’s working as it should – I just wish that my pancreas would work as it should too!
It’s just a bit wild! I started the day high after an 11 hour fast, ran out of the house in a hurry so grabbed a protein bar for breakfast which had no impact at all and then had a late lunch which was ok as far as carbs go (not great but definitely OK) which then caused a huge spike. It’s just very random and I find it really hard to get my head around.
I’m going to use the data I get from this free trial and will see if it’s worth paying for monitors for a little while to make sure I really understand what’s going on.
3) I batch cooked some of my white chilli chicken soup which is really tasty and filling with just 8g carbs per portion.
I made it slightly different to how I usually make it as I found some Itsu chicken broth in the reduced section and I thought that would be nice as a base for this rather than the usual stock that I use. I also used dried chilli instead of fresh chilli and for some reason, these changes have made the soup much darker than usual so it’s less white chilli and more normal chilli colour than usual.
I promise it tastes nicer than it looks!
4) I got a new mobile phone last month! I got a great deal as I’ve been with the same company for as long as I’ve had a mobile phone contract and I ended up speaking to the team who deal with account closures as I knew there were other great deals on the market so I told them if they couldn’t beat the prices I’d seen then I would move. They were able to beat the lowest price I’d seen elsewhere and as much as I didn’t really want to get a new phone, the battery on my old phone was going down quicker than it had when it was new and it was a bit of an issue a couple of times so I thought it was time to upgrade.
We talked about trading in the phone I had and they gave me the option to send it back and reduce the price further but I decided to shop around for trade-in prices and I was pretty surprised by the difference. My mobile phone provider could save me £7 a month over two years if I sent it back to them which meant that the trade-in price was £168 overall and initially, I was over the moon with that and felt it was a great price.
I shopped around though and managed to get more money (just) by using one of those Music Magpie machines in Asda. You basically tell the machine what you’re wanting to trade in then you put your phone into the machine and it does some checks on it and offers you a price which you can accept or decline if it’s you’re not happy with the offer.
I was happy with the offer they gave me so I put the phone in their little machine and within five minutes it had done all the checks it needed to do and agreed to buy it from me. I left it in the machine and by the time I’d walked back out and got my trolley ready to do the shop, the money was in my bank account.
It was ridiculously easy to do and there was someone at the machine when I got there and two people waiting to use it after I was done so it’s clearly a popular option.
5) I spent some time with the kids this weekend (can I even call them kids anymore) and really enjoyed it.
We actually went for a walk and instead of stopping at the cafe for a hot chocolate or an ice cream like we often used to, they brought their own drinks in bottles to carry along as we walked and they bought me one too! Between them, they bought me a new drinks bottle and filled it with water for me to take along on our walk.
I do love spending time with them and I know I often say this, but I’m just super pleased that they’re still happy to spend time with me even thought they have their own lives. One of them has a big week coming up so it was nice to have some chill time together and even nicer that we didn’t spend any money while we were out. 😁
I’m going to make sure that I use my new water bottle daily and that I take it along with me when we go out anywhere in the Summer.
So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week!
Don’t miss out on 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!
Talk to me...