Welcome to this week’s five frugal things round up, where I detail our best money saving achievements. This week has whizzed by in a flash, as so often happens. Although I have been impatient for the weather to improve as we move into spring, I do sometimes wish time would slow down.
At least now that I work for myself, I can decide what I do and when. I am grateful every day for this, even if it does mean living very frugally. No more 9-5 rat race for me, thanks!
I mentioned in last week’s post that our lodger will soon be moving on. We don’t yet have a replacement, so I think the room may be empty for a while. This means looking carefully at our spending and making the best of what we have.
Here are our money saving achievements for the past week.
Money saving achievements #fivefrugalthings
1# Eating from the stores
I didn’t publish a meal plan last week. I decided to see exactly what fresh food needed eating each day and to combine it with items from our store cupboard and freezer.
This has meant some interesting meals. For example, I have used some of the seasoning mixes from Simply Cook in a completely different way to their recipe cards. I have quite a few Simply Cook boxes and didn’t want them hanging around too long.
We discovered that their masala lamb chops mix was just as good with chicken drumsticks, for example – a much cheaper ingredient.
I have only done a very small shop this week to top up with some fresh items, which has saved some money.
2# Olio haul: free food
Saving even more money, we had a great haul from the wonderful Olio app. A local café was giving away sachets of pheasant casserole and pheasant curry. I thought they might be interesting to try, especially for free, so I arranged to go and collect them.
When I arrived I was surprised to find that they weren’t small sachets, as I had assumed, but huge ones. I think each would feed up to six people! They gave me eight sachets, so that is a lot of dinners!
I froze what we didn’t use of the first casserole I opened. It was really very nice.
As I was walking away, the café owner came rushing out with a carrier bag of fresh items too – greens, clementines, spring onions, salad and potatoes. She also gave me a bag of toiletries. It seems they are a food bank collection point and had loads of excess items that day. I was very pleased with this haul!
3# DIY face pack from coffee grounds
I mentioned last week that my lodger had brought me home a box of used coffee grounds so that I could try making a coffee scrub. Since then I made it and put a video about it on my new YouTube channel (please check it out, like and subscribe).
I really love this scrub. It’s better used on your body but is OK on your face too. I am actually going to make another version by squishing the grounds as fine as possible with my pestle and mortar before using regularly on my face.
It also cost hardly anything to make, so is one of my best great money saving achievements for this week.
4# Shredding
I have been pulling out all of the files kept gathering dust under the bed as part of my whole house declutter. Some of the papers go back years and there is no reason to keep them.
I spent an enjoyable few hours on Sunday listening to the Sounds of the 70s and using the new shredder Secret Santa gave me for Christmas.
But what to do with the shredded paper? You can’t put them in the recycling here and I didn’t want to put them in the dustbin. After consulting my fabulous Facebook group, I decided to compost half and keep the other half as padding for my eBay sales.
There are two more boxes to be done, so I might do another this coming Sunday! Very therapeutic.
5# Freebies
I have signed up for a few freebies sites recently, where you receive free products to try. The idea is that you share the results on social media.
The cats got a treat with the first one – some free cat food, which they enjoyed. Lucky, as they are generally fussy! The second one was to try a new Oral-B precision clean brush head and some toothpaste. This has just arrived, so we have yet to try it. As it happens, we both needed a new head for our electric toothbrushes, so we are pleased.
The cat food came from the Insiders and the Oral-B items were via the Savvy Circle. You don’t always get chosen, but it’s worth applying for a few campaigns if you fancy some freebies.
So those are my money saving achievements for the week. How has yours been?
If money is tight for you or you are worried about debt, check out my recent post for Debt Awareness Week. It contains lots of my own ideas for getting out of debt and lots of resources for you to explore further.
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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