Five Frugal Things to kick off November

Brrr! It finally feels properly autumnal and has turned suddenly chilly! Yes, I have given in and put the heating on, although I generally try to be sparing with it. We layer up! Whilst I am snuggled up under my duvet with Archie, I thought I would talk about five frugal things I have done recently.

Changing energy supplier

Having compared heating bills with my brother in law, I realised I could no longer ignore the fact that we were paying way over the odds for our energy. We are frugal with our heating and use a lot less than Justin’s brother, yet our monthly bill was way higher than his!

We had chosen a green energy supplier (Good Energy) some years ago, and accepted that we would pay a little more. However, other green energy suppliers have arrived since and the market has got more competitive.

I had been happy with Good Energy, as their customer service is so much better than the bigger, more traditional companies. But our new provider, Octopus, has great customer service, a green energy tariff and charges less!

Anyway, since we swapped to Octopus Energy, our bill has reduced a lot so I am very happy. And when I signed up using Justin’s brother’s referral code, we both got £50 on our account. If you want to use my referral code to sign up to Octopus and get the same, feel free! It’s here.

Christmas prep

I have made my annual Christmas Spreadsheet and I’m pretty organised.

Come the start of November, there were already quite a few gifts in a box under my bed, so I went through to check what I still needed to buy. I also did the family secret Santa draw, as we buy just one gift for an adult in my large family, rather than having to remortgage the house and buy for everyone. I remember those horribly expensive days!

I haven’t bought much in the way of food yet, just a few snacks and bottles of fizz, but will make sure I chuck a few extras in my shopping trolley each week from now on.

I find it removes the financial strain of Christmas by being organised and spreading the cost. Check out this post for my general approach to the festive season.

Putting the garden to bed

We have enjoyed creating a productive garden again this year and growing some of our own food. Next year to plan to grow even more, and Justin is currently laying a base for a greenhouse we were given.

In the meantime, we have been clearing up the beds and greenhouses – we currently have two small plastic covered ones that served us well.

We still have chard and kale to pick, and I have the last of the butternut squashes sitting in the kitchen waiting to be made into soup. More of that in a bit….

Buying at auction

I mentioned in my last YouTube video (here) that I have decided to give the channel a break for the time-being to focus on my online business selling vintage collectibles.

This has been going well. Scheduling several listings to go live each day definitely makes a difference to the eBay algorithm. I am packing and posting a lot at the moment.

However, this does mean that I need to find a lot of good stock. As car boot sale season is pretty much over in my area, I have been boing to the auction house locally. They do a monthly general sale, and I can get mixed lots of quality items relatively cheaply. 

If you have never been to an auction, give it a go. They are so fun! If you don’t want to sit through hours of bidding, you can go to the viewing day and leave a few bids. That’s what I did last time. I can away with some fabulous bargains, many of which have already sold in my eBay shop.

If you fancy having a look for Christmas gifts or interesting vintage homewares, you can find my eBay shop here.

Making soup

We eat a lot of soup at this time of year, especially as we have lots of fresh and frozen home-grown produce to use up. We didn’t have huge numbers of butternut squashes, but the ones we grew were enormous! They scrambled up everything. We had one quite high in a tree and another growing up the gazebo!

Anyway, butternut squashes make delicious soup and I have found my all time favourite recipe. I think I shared it previously, but it’s so good here it is again! It is from the Boursin website here. I think it would work with pumpkins too, if you have any still kicking about after Halloween. I only used one pack of soft cheese (a cheaper supermarket version of Boursin with garlic and herbs), as I think two would have been overkill.

I have the last of the squashes sitting in the kitchen looking at me, so this weekend I will be converting him into a bit batch for the freezer.

Anyway, those are my five frugal things to kick off November. How is your month going so far?