A frugal lifestyle, and just as well!

Hello and welcome to another round up of my thrifty and frugal week, where I tell you about our frugal lifestyle and what we do to save money.

The news has been alarming and worrying this week. We have a looming energy crisis, which means our fuel bills will be going through the roof! There is little we can do about this, other than to not waste energy, turn off lights, only heat the water we will use, wear layers rather than put on the heating, etc.

It might mean that many of us have to find savings elsewhere. More reasons to adopt a frugal lifestyle I think… Honestly, I wish we could go completely off grid and be self-sufficient in energy, but the budget doesn’t currently have room for solar panels or other measures at this point.

I also wish as a country that we had invested more heavily in renewable energy years ago. Not only would this be better for the planet, it would mean we weren’t reliant on gas coming from other countries.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom and onto what we have done to maintain a frugal lifestyle this week.

This week’s frugal lifestyle

DIY

My efforts to redecorate our bedroom are going quite slowly, partly through just being busy with work and partly because I never have enough energy to do it all in one go!

Anyway, I painted half the bedroom this week, just using white emulsion that we already had and white gloss on the woodwork, which I did have to buy.

It looks a lot brighter, but I really need to complete the rest of it. I will try to do that next week. You may have seen in previous posts that I am also upcycling all of the bedroom furniture. This needs completing. I have two bedside tables and a large chest of drawers still to do.

I have been searching for second hand curtains on line too and have already bought some pre-owned bedlinen. 

Doing it this way keeps the costs to an absolute minimum and is more environmentally friendly than simply buying everything from new. 

Charity shop bargains

I had an hour to spare in the week when I dropped Archie at the groomers, so I had a quick visit to my two favourite charity shops. Both are so reasonably priced and I nearly always find some good bargains.

This time I found some trainers in my size for £1, which I have been looking for. They are only Primark, but they are in good condition and very comfortable. 

I also picked up a roll of parcel wrap for 20p, a small wicker basket to make a Christmas hamper for £1, some shorts for Mr Shoestring for 50p, a nice thick jumper, also for Mr S for £2, a rain mac for £3, a metal bread bin for £2, a vintage tea towel for 50p (1989!), a pink blanket for the bedroom and another wicker basket with a handle for £1.

That was a pretty good haul for the money!

More foraging

I did a bit more foraging this week. We collected another bag of blackberries on our Sunday walk, then I picked up a few rose hips a few days later.

Both are now in the freezer. I think I was a bit too early with the rose hips as when I read up about them the consensus was that they are better picked after the first frost. But I didn’t find anywhere near enough for my planned rose hip syrup anyway. The freezer will act in the same way as the frost too!

More jelly

As you will know if you watch my YouTube channel, I had a big clear out of the freezers and found a ton of red currants that needed using.

I made one batch last week, then another bigger batch this week. Now we only have one small bag of red currants in the freezer, which I will mix in with some other berries to go on our porridge.

I plan to print some nice labels and give a few jars of jelly as Christmas presents.

I had to pinch some jars out of people’s recycling on my dog walk as I didn’t have enough, but better to reuse than recycle anyway. They got a very good wash in the dishwasher and then soaked to remove their labels. A different sort of foraging!

My pantry challenge continues

When I cleared the freezers I also sorted the pantry and food cupboards out, and made a note of items I needed to build into my weekly meal plan, as I said in last week’s round up of our frugal lifestyle. 

As a result, I haven’t done a shop for a week and a half as I have been using things up. I will go soon though as I want to build up our stores of non-perishables again. My challenge this week is to use some of the large bag of gram flour I found. I have had lots of good suggestions on my YouTube channel comments, so will explore further.

Green idea of the week

I thought I would also share another thing I have done this week, which isn’t frugal but is beneficial to the environment. Instead of using the usual search engines, I have installed the Ecosia search engine on both my phone and laptop.

Billed as the search engine that plants trees, Ecosia is a social enterprise that uses 80% of its profits to plant trees around the world. It claims that each search using Ecoasia will actually remove 2kg of CO2 from the air.

This seems like a brilliant idea and pretty effortless for the user, so it is one that I really want to support. You can find out how to install it here.

So that’s my weekly round up of our frugal lifestyle done. Are you worried about energy price hikes? Are you trying to save money where you can as we are?

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