This week’s Frugal Friday round up

Welcome to my frugal Friday round up, where each week I summarise five things I have done to keep costs down, save or make some money. 

It’s been quite a busy one, but I have been feeling pretty good and have had more energy than usual. I think it is because I have been avoiding sugar and alcohol. The weather was also a bit cooler, which I prefer. I love the sunshine, but not when it’s too hot!

This week’s Frugal Friday round up

Preparing for a new lodger

This week I finally finished painting the lodger’s room. I had to do it here and there in between working and fending off the dog. Everything takes three times as long with a puppy in the house!

Whilst I had the paint out, I gave the downstairs loo a quick going over too. It has needed doing for ages, so I was relieved to have done it.

Now that I have located my DIY mojo, I really want to start on the hallway. I have used up most of the paint we already have now though, so will have to buy more before I can get going on it.

As I said in last week’s post, I spent £5 on new pillows and £1 on a lampshade, both from the boot sale. I have since spent a further £20 on a new duvet cover and pillow cases, and £14 on a duvet, so £40 altogether! Not bad.

It looks much fresher and brighter, and I have taken some photos so that I can get the advert on spareroom.com later today. It can take a while to find the right person, but we will see!

Courgettes with everything

It is that time of year. The courgettes are coming thick and fast, so yesterday I made a big pot of ratatouille.

I need to make soup too, but the freezers are quite full at the moment. This week I have done a minimal food shop so that we can use some things up and make space. 

I have also been through our stores and organised what we have. It was all packed into the spare room, which is a bit of a mess, to be honest. I am trying to persuade my daughters to take some of the things they have left in it. They haven’t missed anything in there for a couple of years so they really don’t need most of their junk!

Everything is now in the larder cupboard in the kitchen, which is packed but orderly.

Spray painting

I bought some spray paint for a big wicker laundry basket I picked up a while back at the boot sale. There has been no time to use it yet, but I did get a chance to test it out on a wicker heart that was looking very faded and grubby. 

It has been in the window for a few years, so I gave it a quick spray to brighten it up and found a new piece of ribbon (it was wrapped around the new duvet cover!).

I will try to get the laundry basket done too over the weekend. Spray painting is so quick and easy!

Meeting friends

We ventured out to lunch with some friends yesterday. There is a beautiful park in town and it was a lovely day, so we decided to save ourselves some money and easily social distance by all taking a picnic.

I decided to just go with eating carbs for the day, so made some sandwiches and a flask and off we went. None of us were desperate to go into a pub or cafe anyway!

Archie found it all quite exciting. He was very well behaved actually and was shattered when we got home. 

The destroyer

Talking of the beast, he is still chewing anything we are stupid enough to leave lying around. This week it was another coaster (that’s two completely destroyed now) and a whole toilet roll.

I picked up some soft toys at the boot sale for him. It doesn’t matter if he chews through them all when they are 10p a time. Little sod!!

Anyway, that is my Frugal Friday round up in a nutshell. I hope you have had a good week. Please share your frugal wins in the comments below.

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