Five frugal things to see out the year

Happy New Year! It’s 2021 and, despite the oddness of the past year, I feel strangely optimistic about this one. Here are five frugal things I did this week to end the year the way it began. 

I really do intend to make 2021 a super frugal year. Times are tough. Two of my three daughters are struggling with money due to the pandemic and I want to support them when I can. 

There are also things I really want to do when we are allowed to. The main one being to have another week (or two) on the Norfolk coast. It’s good to have something to look forward to, especially at the moment when things can seem so dark and uncertain.

I published my other goals for 2021 in this post. Anyway, onto my five frugal things summary.

Used up the Christmas leftovers

We didn’t have masses of leftover meat from Christmas as I tried not to buy too much. It was easy to eat most of it in a second roast on Boxing Day, which also used up pretty much all of the veg that we cooked the previous day.

We have been working our way through the cheese, and just have Stilton left. This will be OK for a while yet, then I will probably make some stilton and broccoli soup, one of my faves.

I have frozen the turkey bones and carcass, ready to make some stock. We eat tons of soup in the winter, so it will definitely be used this month.

Free food from Olio

One of the reasons I wasn’t in a rush to make soup from the turkey carcass was that I picked up a ton of mushrooms for free on the Olio app (8 tubs!). I made mushroom soup with some of these, used some in cooking and sliced the remainder up for the freezer.

Also from Olio this week: 2 bags of mixed salad, a pot of cress, 3 sandwiches, 3 packs of ham, 2 bags of potatoes, 3 red peppers and a cucumber. I am lucky to have four people within a stone’s throw who collect and distribute.

This is so handy if you are on a tight budget, and brilliant for preventing food waste.

Saved the Christmas wrap

I collected up any wrapping paper that wasn’t too screwed up or torn, folded it up and put it away for reuse. The stuff that was too damaged has been saved in a bag to used as padding if I send out anything fragile. As I sell on eBay, I get through quite a lot.

I actually bought reusable fabric gift bags. Some of these were given bag, so they have been stored for Christmas 2021 as well.

I will also keep the Christmas cards and cut those with pinking shears to use as next year’s gift tags. 

From the chat on on my Facebook group, it seems I am not alone in doing this. Most members also did the same, but then we are all looking to live a more thrifty and frugal lifestyle.

Got £5 off a £40 shop

Has anyone else found the supermarket shelves to be rather bare since Christmas? I heard that this was the case in Lidl and in Asda this week!

I’m not sure if the chaos at the border with France just before Christmas is the cause of this. Anyway, my daughter got a full shop from Iceland online and sent me a code to get £5 off a £40 shop. This week I am going to give that a try and stock the freezers up.

We do have quite a bit of food in the house. I always like to keep a well stocked larder and was thankful for this when everyone else was panic buying pasta and loo roll back in March. So, I am not too worried now, but cautious nonetheless.

One last hurrah!

I managed to nip to the £1 charity shop on Christmas Eve for one last look round before we moved to tier 4. Who knows when they will be able to open again?

I picked up a great Christmas jumper for £1, which Mr S wore until the bell on the hood drove him nuts. Think that might have to come off for next year!

Another bargain was a really nice, brand new shoulder bag from Accessorise. I haven’t decided whether to keep this or not, but it might be good to have a smarter bag. Usually I lug far too much around in a bashed up back pack.

I miss hunting for bargains, but hopefully we will all get vaccinated soon and can start to return to some sort of normality. 

I hope you had a lovely festive season and managed some fizz to see in the New Year. Did you manage five frugal things for Christmas week?

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