Welcome to my weekly round up. Here are some of the thrifty and frugal things we have been up to this week to save money and a chance to catch up.
Decluttering frenzy
It’s been a bit of a busy week. I made a start decluttering one of the large sheds in the garden in preparation for our upcoming house move. There were so many cobwebs!
Because I hate throwing things away if someone else could potentially use them, I listed a few items on Freegle. Three of them were collected the same day. The last one, a battered nest of tables, will hopefully be collected tomorrow.
I pulled out a few items to sell, but most of the small things that we no longer need will be going to a boot sale. My daughter is doing the honours and selling them as she is trying to build her savings. I love going to browse at boot sales, but I don’t enjoy selling at them!
Half used pots of paint will be put at the front of our house with a FREE sign. Hopefully someone can make use of them. I would donate them to a Community RePaint scheme, but we don’t have one in our area.
Me and Justin already sorted the other large shed out a couple of weeks ago. We are making progress! You can see us in action here and here on my YouTube channel.
I taught my kids frugality
I wrote a post some time back about teaching your children to be frugal. Well, it seems to have worked with mine, particularly my youngest. Not only is she very good with money, she is now a finance journalist, and often appears on the media to give frugal hints and tips. I am a proud mummy! You can see her on a recent Mirror Facebook live, here.
She gave some great advice about how to save money in the current financial climate. I think it is so important to teach your children how to manage their money. It’s an important life skill.
Smart about energy
I am watching our smart meter like a hawk, to see when it uses the most electricity when it’s running. The washing machine is a big culprit. I had to do two loads the other day and the electricity was the highest it has ever been!
I washed bedlinen and used quite a long wash at 40 degrees, but I won’t be doing that again. Most of the time I use a quick 30 minute cycle, so I will use that for everything from now on. I did a video about saving money on laundry here.
The oven is another energy guzzler. Mostly I use the air fryer now, but if I do put the oven on I make sure I am cooking more than one thing.
The other thing we are doing is to put a single lamp on in the sitting room in the evening, rather than the overhead lights. There are two of them on the same switch, with six bulbs between them, so it makes more sense to just use the lamp.
House move progress
The house sale appears to be progressing well. I have been expecting something to go wrong, but it actually seems that we will be moving very soon, hopefully in six-eight weeks.
Moving home is NOT frugal, of course. It costs a lot of money! However, we are keeping costs down wherever possible. My daughter used a great ‘man with a van’ when she moved to her current flat, and he (along with his colleague) was both efficient and cheap.
You can spend thousands on removal companies, especially if you get them to do the packing for you. We plan to use our man with a van to do the inside and move everything from the garden ourselves to save money. As well as this, we will be packing our belongings and have been collecting boxes, bubble wrap and newspapers for a few months.
If we run out of boxes, I will put a wanted ad on Freegle.
A bi-weekly shop
I find that the more often I go to the supermarket, the more I spend! Now that it is just the two of us here we don’t really need to do a weekly shop, so I have taken to going once a fortnight instead. Then, if we run out of milk or bread, one of us can nip into Lidl when we are passing and whizz through the self service till. But we try not to run out of anything!
As I don’t particularly enjoy shopping, this suits me and helps us to save money. If I could get away with the fresh produce, I would go once a month.
It is hard to keep our grocery bills low currently, but we are meal planning and writing a shopping list each time, which definitely helps. Plus we have some produce in the garden too.
Times are tough for many of us now, but we save money wherever we can. How are you finding things, and what frugal things are you doing to stretch the pennies?
Teresa says
I’m excited to see your new home, is it near to where you live now? I knew you didn’t want to go far because of your family.
That’s great that your daughters are not getting sucked into the world of excessive consumerism. It will serve them well for their future.
Price rises are really scary, I buy as much yellow sticker food as possible. In fact I get disappointed if I have to pay full
I feed a lot of feral cats and pet food has shot up, it was costing me £4.50 a day to feed them and now it’s costing £6.00, and I already have 13 cats of my own. I go to the shops almost everyday because I save so much on reduced meat that often turns out to be cheaper than pet food believe it or not.
Really enjoy your YouTube channel and the other channels you collaborate with. X
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
Wow! 13 cats? I’m always falling over my two. Think I would be permanently on the floor with 13! That must cost a lot, especially with the feral cats too
Sally says
We moved ourselves 100 miles to the south coast. We had a caravan there so rented storage and brought down loads of boxes over a few weeks. Rented a large van over a weekend for the rest. Daughter took our 2 sofas for her new house as she didn’t move with us. Worked out a lot cheaper to rent storage for 2 months than paying a removal company. Ended up living in the caravan for 3 weeks as buyer wanted us out earlier than our new home was ready. But anything we needed was in a local storage container so all good. Gave us time to unpack gradually from the container, so much easier than one huge mass of boxes in one go. when we had our new house. Hope it goes well for you.
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
To be honest, we would be moving ourselves if we didn’t know a particularly cheap man with a van! The price of removal companies!!! Thanks for your good wishes.
Emma says
I have been using my local Nextdoor site to sell a few bits cluttering up the garage and loft space. I have also been using Freecycle for free items as I would rather items find a new home than go to landfill. However I do get very fed up with the time wasters. I have met some lovely people but have also experienced on several occasions people that arrange a time but then never show or message to apologise. Really sad that people get a kick out of this. Do you get this too?
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
It’s quite satisfying, isn’t it?
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
I know what you mean about time wasters. I had that a lot on Facebook, although they usually turn up when the stuff is free! People are rude.
Pen says
Hi I am making sure I do a weekly shopping plan and armed with my new instant pot am cooking up and freezing a lot of beans and dried grains (am mainly veggie) – and I’m also going through the house putting 5 to 10 items a day onto eBay to try and make some money to pay off a small amount of debt and put aside for the increased energy price rises. Thanks for another great blog; I’ve been following you for sometime now I always come away from your vlog/blog feeling much more positive about things – preparation is everything and we can all do so much to insulate ourselves as much as possible against these rising prices as well as living a more sustainable and joyful life!
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
Brilliant! Thanks for visiting. It sounds as if you are very organised – which is what we need to be at the moment!