Five Frugal Things we did this week {15th June 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! 👐

I’ve been having a bit of a think this week about this weekly post – it’s always been my favourite post to write for pretty much as long as I’ve been writing this blog and sharing bits of my life online. It’s helped me through various stages of my life over the last 15 years or so. 

I started writing it when saving money wherever I could was a real focus. I needed to save money more than at any time in my life when the kids were little. I know I’ve said this before but having my Mum and Brother pass away within a year of each other really impacted me and my view on life and I wanted to spend as much time as I could making memories with the kids and to make sure I was there for them as much as I can be.  I wanted to be able to work less hours to spend more time with them and to do that, I needed to cut costs in as many areas of our lives as possible. This post helped keep me accountable for doing that and made it feel a little bit fun to do it – like a challenge. 

When the kids were older and in secondary school, I went back to work full time which gave us extra money each month. The goal for me then changed – I wanted to be in a position to pay off any debt that I had so all money saved went towards that. I was able to do that and by that point, saving money was a habit. Something I didn’t even have to think about which, added to the fact that I was working full time, meant that I didn’t need to be as careful with money anymore. 

My motivation changed again at that point as I started to want to travel a bit more with the kids before they were too old to want to do stuff with me and we had some amazing trips – New York and Beverly Hills were the best and only possible because I saved money elsewhere to pay for them. 

And my last real money saving phase before this one was when my marriage ended as the money we had coming in suddenly had to fund two houses. Saving money was then no longer a nice habit to have but a necessity to get through the month and pay the bills. 

This weekly post has been a focus for me every week through all these stages and over the years, I’ve had emails from you regularly with comments on what I’ve shared, ideas that you think might help and some suggestions for things you’ve done that might work for me. 

It’s helped me massively throughout my adult life through the times when I needed to save money to get through to the next payday and the times that I wanted to save money to save towards a goal.  

So now, even though I don’t post as often as I used to and my life is in a different space, this is the one post that I keep going. 😁 

That was a bit deep for a Sunday afternoon, wasn’t it? 

Let’s get to the moneysaving…. 

1) My favourite way to start this post has always been to share some bargain flowers so here we go…

They look a bit worse for wear now that they’re in their vase at home but they looked pretty much perfect in the shop when I picked them up and spotted the 79p price sticker. 

Fresh flowers always make me happy so a bargain bunch of flowers makes me even happier. 🥰

2) This isn’t exactly groundbreaking but I am now fully back into the swing of meal planning and loving seeing how much we can save doing it – we’re saving money obviously but also the time we used to spend staring into the fridge wondering what to eat. 😁

My meal planning is often quite vague which means we can be quite flexible. For example, for tomorrow night, I bought chicken which can be cooked in so many different ways using what we have in. I have cajun spices, barbecue sauce, shawarma spices…all sorts. We also have flatbreads, rice, pasta and plenty of veg in so it means that the chicken I bought can be turned into so many different meals depending on what we fancy on the day. 

I bought mince for Tuesday night which could be mince and onions, bolognese, chilli, tacos and a million other meals. 

My herbs and spices have taken over a whole cupboard so I can do more with basics. 

3) On  the subject of meals, I bought a gammon joint last week from Asda for about £6. I cooked it last Sunday afternoon and we had a kind of Sunday lunch before my partner went to work on nights but it did so much more than just that one meal (as you’d expect from a joint to be fair 😁).

We made sandwiches for nightshift two nights running with some of the leftovers and it also did tea on Monday for me with scrambled eggs on top of it and roasted tomatoes on the side.

And then I used the last of it in a cheese and ham omelette for lunch on Tuesday. 

4) Our first garden strawberry of the year has been officially picked and tasted. 

I’d have liked enough to make a bowl of strawberries but I’ll take just one for now. 

In it’s defence, it was very tasty. 🍓

The tomatoes aren’t looking too bad either!

5) I love houmous (I have no idea how to spell it though) and I saw a recipe ages ago for beetroot houmous that I’ve been wanting to try using a dusty can of chickpeas from the back of our kitchen cupboard. I kept forgetting to buy the beetroot I needed for it though so by the time I actually got around to buying it, I’d lost the recipe I found so I decided to wing it. 

I just added the whole tin of chickpeas, a pack of beetroot, some tahini and some ricotta into the blender and blended until it was smooth. 

It’s nice but I definitely made too much as there’s only me that will eat it and I’m pretty sure I’ll not get through it all in the next couple of days so next time I’ll make a smaller portion. 😁

It’s actually a really good way to use up leftover chickpeas as I often just use half a can to add to a salad or something that I’m cooking. I’ll make a little batch of houmous with what’s left next time and use whatever I have in to add a bit of flavour to it – pesto, tomatoes, garlic.

So, there’s this week’s five frugal things – I hope you’ve all had a happy Frugal week!

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