Sometimes, it is the big things that save you money, for sure. Haggling a few thousand off the cost of a second-hand car or a hundred off the insurance will make a big difference to your budget. However, sometimes, the small things you do to save a pound here or a dollar there really do add up. When you want to save money, every little helps.
This has been my experience, anyway. Getting into regular frugal habits makes a massive difference to my budget.
This week’s round-up hopefully illustrates this point. Here is what we have been up to this week.
Making money from our spare room
Our current lodger is leaving at the beginning of September. We knew she was only planning to stay for a few months before she headed off to study in Europe.
I put an ad on Spare Room as usual and managed to get a new tenant within a week! This is unusual, as we have always had a few months between lodgers in the past.
In fact, this one is flying in from New Zealand for work in the middle of August. She needs somewhere to stay immediately so we have offered her our smaller spare room, just for a couple of weeks until the main room is available.
We have never had two lodgers at once before. Let’s hope it’s not too chaotic! What am I saying? I love a bit of chaos:).
Renting out our spare room helps our budget a lot. I have a post on how you can make money from your spare room here.
A massive declutter
Because I need to clear out our little room and put stuff in the attic temporarily, I decided to finally tackle this space. Stuff was piled high. It was full of things we thought might be useful, but can’t easily get to so have forgotten about.
There were so many ancient pillows and yellowing duvets. Nobody would want to use those again! I also found three bags of clothing. None of us can even remember putting these up there.
I still have half of it to tackle, but have made a really good start. My car is currently squashed full of things for the charity shop and there is a pile of rubbish to go to the tip too.
It feels very cathartic to bring a bit of order to the attic at last.
Listing our ‘rubbish’ on eBay
Some of the clothing, some linen and curtains I found in the attic has gone to the charity shop. However, I have kept bag of better quality items to list on eBay.
I also dug out my daughter’s old Wii, which hasn’t been used for several years, so will list that too. We might as well make a bit of cash from our old rubbish!
Buying second hand
I am keen not to buy more things to clutter up the house. However, I have been working hard on my YouTube channel but have been struggling with the poor sound from the videos I have made on my phone.
People are sticking with me and watching my content, but there have been quite a few comments about the low volume.
I decided to do something about it an invest in a second hand camera designed for good quality filming. After watching and reading some reviews, I bought a pre-owned DJI Osmo pocket camera. I can’t wait for it to arrive, so I can get filming!
These have come down in price a lot since they were introduced a few years ago, but buying second hand meant that I got a bargain.
A tea caddy from a pickle jar
One of the things I featured on my last YouTube vlog was this little jar I upcycled for my Red Bush tea bags. I had some Fablon lying around so I just stuck some to the lid to make it blend in with my other caddies, also pink and green.
It only took 10 minutes and I am pleased with it. I think it would be very easy to make a variety of storage jars match and blend into whatever colour scheme you have using this. Plus, it saved the jar from the recycling bin!
As I said before, every little helps when it comes to saving money. If you would like to share your frugal wins for the week, please comment below. Or you could come and join the chat in my Facebook group, My Second Hand & Frugal Life. See you there!
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