Five Frugal Things we did this week {6th July 2025}….

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! 👐

We’re away this weekend for a couple of days in an Airbnb that we booked a couple of months ago and I can’t even tell you how grateful I am that it’s not as hot as it was last weekend as we’re staying in a little cabin tucked away in the corner of a farm and it would have been unbearable in that heat last weekend. 😁

The cabin itself is pretty isolated with no TV, no Wifi and nothing at all within walking distance (well not my walking distance anyway) and it’s just beautiful. This is the view I opened my eyes to this morning… 

We have lots planned over the Summer so this was always going to be a bit of a minimal spend trip away so aside from paying for the cabin itself, our goal was to have the best time without spending too much at all.  I thought today’s post could be a cheeky five ways that we saved money on our weekend away edition.

1) We made a packed lunch for our journey here.

It was a super basic packed lunch using up what we had in the house rather than buying anything in. We had ham sandwiches, some fruit from the fruit bowl and a few random biscuits that we had in. We also had some juice which we made up in our water bottles with some ice to wash it down. 

We did pop the picnic blanket in the back of a car as I had ambitious plans to stop somewhere scenic to eat our picnic but we were hungry so we ended up eating it in the car an hour after we left home. 😁

2) We stopped in the most amazing farm shop today to buy things for this afternoons picnic, again which I planned to eat somewhere nice on our picnic blanket but again, we were too hungry to wait for that so the picnic blanket stayed in the car boot and we ate today’s picnic on the steam train trip that we booked for this afternoon instead. 

We had a whole carriage to ourselves for the journey so I probably enjoyed it more than I would have done eating it outside but that’s not the point. 🚂 

I ordered our new picnic blanket from Amazon earlier this week especially for this weekend as I had some Amazon vouchers to use so tomorrow we are definitely using it! Unless it’s raining, or we get hungry in the car, or we just decide to eat it elsewhere. 😁

3)  We did have tea out last night but our choices were very limited. We fancied a nice pub meal but it’s hard when you don’t know the area and the only ones that the Airbnb hosts recommended had menus that were a bit fancy for us.  The pictures looked like the food was straight out of a Michelin starred restaurant with some very elaborate descriptions for each dish. 

So we decided to go somewhere where you can’t go wrong – the good old Toby Carvery.

It helped our decision that we actually had a voucher for a free meal in the Toby Carvery app so we spent just over £20 on two big meals and two refillable drinks which is the same as we would have paid for just one meal in one of the pubs we were looking at.

I love a Toby carvery as it’s a really safe bet for me as a diabetic as the meat and veg are mostly OK for me and the bits that are most definitely not great (roasties, mash, stuffing and the amazing mac and cheese) can be avoided or at least I can just get small portions. I can be much more in control when we eat there. 

4) We’ve been back in our cabin since 4pm today after having a lovely day out. We’re making the most of the hot tub and planning on cooking our tea on the barbecue tonight when we get hungry. We brought some food from our freezer at home in a little cool box as we didn’t know what shops would be around here and didn’t want to waste our time looking for a supermarket. We don’t have much to be fair, just a couple of chicken breasts, some sausages and some burgers but it’ll definitely do the trick and that’s another bargain meal down.  We also have some strawberries to eat after which we got from a little roadside honesty box at the end of a farmers drive on our way home today. 🍓

5) We were in two minds about whether to go out tonight. It almost feels like we should because we’re away from home on a holiday (albeit a very short one) but we decided to stay in.  I’ll be honest, staying in is absolutely because we just wanted to relax and spend some time together in such a lovely place but there’s no denying that it will save us money so it totally counts as money saving, right? 

We have a pack of cards, a box of dominoes (that we bought from the boot sale last week for 50p) and the hot tub to keep us occupied and aside from the noisy neighbours, it’s idyllic here! Seriously, the cows and the sheep in the field next to us are no issue at all but there’s a bird who sounds very angry in the tree behind the cabin. 🦜 😁

So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week and that you didn’t mind this week’s being a bit more of a spendy post than usual. I just wanted to share that you didn’t have to spend a fortune on a trip away to have the best time. 

We’ve not set out to spend nothing at all, we’ve just been very intentional about what we did spend as we have such a lot of other things planned in for the next few months and honestly, we’d rather have the money to spend there when we don’t have the option really of packed lunches and nights in doing nothing. 

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