Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that 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) It’s been way too long since I’ve been able to start one of these weekly posts with a bunch of bargain flowers, hasn’t it? Well, I’m fixing that right now with these little beauties…
They cost me a grand total of 25p and they’ve been brightening up my kitchen windowsill for the last five days! I do love Daffodils and the fact that they’re so cheap even when you don’t get a bargain bunch like mine means that you can pop a cheeky bunch in your trolley when you pick up your shopping and have some sunshine in your kitchen for the week ahead!
2) At the same time as I picked up the reduced flowers, I bought a giant pack of lean minced beef which needed using that day or freezing. I could have just frozen it but I know my freezers are like a black hole and often when something ends up in there, it’s never seen again.
So I got out the tinned tomatoes and raided my herbs and spices shelf and made a giant batch of chilli in the Instant Pot. I even added grated courgette from the fridge to bulk it out and to use up the courgettes I’d been planning on using to make some of my ham and courgette risotto for tea the night before but was too tired to be bothered and went for avocado on toast instead. I made five good-sized portions of lovely chilli and it tastes even better as I only paid £2.79 for the mince.
3) Did you catch my post yesterday about how to remove bobbles from fabric? This week, I’ve used my new little bobble remover to bring life back to clothes that were looking way past their best. I’m over the moon with the difference in some of the before and afters. I even had a go at a cushion that was about to make its way to our fabric recycling bin due to all the bobbling on it. This was the amount of fluff I emptied from my little gadget after two minutes of de-bobbling.
I’ll not reshare all the before and after pics but do pop over to the post if you missed it and you want to have a look at the difference I made to the things I worked on.
4) I love a good perfume and recently discovered the FM fragrances which are supposed to be copies of designer fragrances although I didn’t choose the one I love because I’d ever smelt the original version, I chose it because when I was going through the little tester bottles the copy of Tom Ford’s ‘Lost Cherry’ perfume was a scent that I loved. I’ve been wearing it for about a year now and love it and I still haven’t even seen a bottle of the original never mind smelled some.
I think at least three of my friends have bought the same perfume from me waving my bottle about whenever I spray it and raving about how it’s such a good alternative to full price designer fragrances. Then a couple of weeks ago someone mentioned that if I liked designer dupes then I should check out Zara because their perfumes were often designed to duplicate some of the pricier fragrances on the market and that they’d even worked with Jo Malone on some of their fragrances.
My favourite ever perfume is Jo Malone Nectarine and Honey Blossom which is way too pricey for me to buy on a regular basis so I thought I’d take a chance on the Zara fruity fragrance in the hope that I could find something that was similar to my old favourite.
I actually bought it off Vinted as brand new and it cost £6.50 for 100ml which was an amazing price – especially as I was using money from my account after selling a jumper.
It reminds me very much of the Jo Malone perfume but not in the sense that it smells the same which I know makes no sense at all. It’s just got that light fruity feminine scent that I love without being overpowering and I really love it. It’s not super long-lasting but it does last OK and just needs a quick top-up every now and again through the day.
The only thing I don’t like about it is that the spray top isn’t compatible with my little perfume atomiser which is what I like to use to decant a small amount of perfume into to pop in my handbag – you can see my favourite one in the background of the photo above. It’s not a deal-breaker at all and I still love the perfume, I just wish I could have it in a smaller bottle.
5) Hot on the heels of moving into her own flat, Miss Frugal has now passed her driving test! She’s loving life right now! 😂
I bought her a car a little while ago and I was planning to pay her car insurance for the first year which I knew was going to be super expensive for obvious reasons and my plan was to just upgrade her learner’s insurance policy which I thought would be the easiest option rather than cancelling that one and incurring cancellation costs but that wasn’t to be when I rang them up and they said they wouldn’t insure her because she has a Saturday job in the amusements in town! Apparently, that means she has a disreputable occupation!!! I tried to tell them that she just works in the prize booth swapping tickets for daft prizes but they were having none of it so I had no option but to cancel and pay the £72 cancellation charge which hurt me (and my purse).
Anyway, it worked out well overall as I hopped over to Top Cashback and used their link to go to one of the comparison sites and did some shopping around. I managed to get a policy for a really good price which was about 50% less than I was expecting to pay a month and managed to get £40 cashback too so I’ve paid the cancellation charge back in the first month in my own head.
Come over and join our fab Facebook group – Spend Less, Live Better! We’ve hit 35,000 members in the group now so it’s a great place to be and I’ve got Miss Frugal in there helping me out now.
As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing anything you’ve done that’s been thrifty or frugal from your week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the Frugal Friday linky at the bottom of this post.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with the five frugal things linky by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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