Being super frugal! This week at Shoestring Cottage

Hi, and welcome to my weekly roundup of my super frugal life! Here’s what I have been up to this week at Shoestring Cottage.

I did a really interesting collaboration with five other frugal YouTubers last week, where we talked about our Five Favourite Frugal Things. If you want to check it out, take a look here. It was so interesting to see our slightly different perspectives on the same subject. 

A massive declutter begins!

Meanwhile, things are hotting up on the possible house move. We have accepted an offer on ours and had one accepted on a fabulous property. Previous experience tells me that this is just an early stage and several things could go wrong, but we have our fingers firmly crossed that they won’t.

With a potential move just months away, we have been having a clear out. There is no point in paying to move things we never use, after all. I cleared three bags of bits this week, which are sitting in the spare room waiting for my eldest daughter to sell them at a boot sale.

I have also listed a few items online, as every little helps towards our removal costs.

Using up the bread ends

I continue to feed us from the pantry as much as possible, spending very little on groceries each week as a result. Because we have a potential house move, I am pulling out and using all the bits and bobs from the freezer too.

As I write this, I have just made a bread pudding from a bag of bread ends I found this morning – it’s in the oven! I used this delicious Cranks recipe; it’s the best one I have ever come across, I think because it uses butter rather than suet.

Mr Shoestring will be pleased when he gets in as he loves a bit of bread pud and custard.

A productive veg patch

Also helping to keep our grocery bill down are the things we planted in the greenhouse and on the veg patch. We have had quite a few courgettes (I feel a ratatouille or a tray bake coming on). I also picked a delicious cucumber yesterday and there are loads more on the way, plus we still have salad leaves coming through. 

We have fruit too – the raspberries are doing great this year and there are red and blackcurrants on the way. 

The tomatoes are flowering, so hopefully we will get a bumper crop of those too. However, the pesky blackflies are all over the runner beans. This happened last year and we hardly had any as a result. 

We aren’t exactly going for self-sufficiency, but it all helps.

Reduced and free food

I have been looking out for reduced food as much as I can, and found these avocadoes reduced from 80p each to just 19p. They weren’t even very ripe, so Lord knows why they were yellow stickered. Not that I am complaining!

I also picked up a load of stuff from Olio: bread, sushi, salad and spinach. This is such a great app. It prevents food waste and helps people stretch their budgets too.

Boot sale bargains (ish)

I finally found the time to get to the boot sale last weekend. I thought it would be quite good as it was a beautiful day and there were lots of stalls. However, I only just filled my granny trolley. 

I did manage to get a couple of nice T-shirts for myself and five or six items to sell online. But it seems that the days are gone when I would pick up bags and bags of bargains for £1 or £2. There are always a lot of traders. I think people are finding that they get more money selling online. It takes more time, but when you are short of cash it is worth it.

Vinted doesn’t charge either, so is becoming really popular. I don’t have very much on there, but I am trying to increase my listings. My page is here, if you want to take a peek.

So those are my super frugal efforts this week. How has your week been? Are you aiming for frugality to cope with the rising cost of living?

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.