Welcome to this week’s round up of my money saving week.
A frugal bank holiday
As we head into what promises to be a sunny and beautiful Bank Holiday weekend, we are thinking about what to do.
We are planning to do a boot sale tomorrow, so hopefully will be making some money. It was supposed to be last week but it rained continuously the day before, so we decided to put it off for finer weather. This means that our house has been full of bags of stuff to sell all week! I brought it all up from the shed and it took ages, so I wasn’t going to put it all back. My eldest daughter is helping, along with our lodger, Katie.
On Sunday or Monday we will be visiting the Countess of Warwick’s Show. We have been going for the last few years and we love it. If you are in Essex or Hertfordshire, it is well worth going. It is also great value for a family as they charge £10 per car, so you can cram all the kids in for the one price!
If you are feeling a bit skint, I have plenty of other ideas for free and frugal things to do over a bank holiday here.
Going electric
No, not a new car (although an electric car is my plan for the future, I hope), but I finally gave in to an electric toothbrush. Mr S swears by his but I kept refusing on the basis that they don’t come made of bamboo…. However, my gums have felt oddly itchy lately, so when he found a rechargeable one at better than half price on his Amazon Prime account* account and offered to get me one, I gave in. It even came with a free tube of toothpaste!
It feels bizarre to use, like you whole head is vibrating. However, there is no doubt it is doing a better job of cleaning my teeth than a manual toothbrush. (Don’t tell him I said that!).
Freezing our home grown bounty
So far, I have frozen quite a few bags of courgettes to chuck into soups and stews over the winter. We have a ton of chard in the garden, which I had never tried freezing before. However, I chopped and blanched some and it has been frozen in portion sized bags.
To round off my money saving week, my plan for this afternoon is to make some herb ice cubes with our parsley, oregano, chives and rosemary. It’s very straightforward, but if you don’t know where to start Gardener’s World have good instructions here.
Removing stains from clothing
As many of you know, part of my self employed income now comes from reselling stuff on ebay. My sister gave me loads of bags of her old stuff a few weeks ago. There were some very nice items (she doesn’t buy cheap!). However, they had clearly been sitting in storage for a while and one bag had small, brown stains all over it which had made it onto some of the clothing.
As a result, some of it went straight onto the boot sale pile, but other items were too good to let go that cheaply. I have been doing some stain removal.
I have run out of my Soda Crystals Oxi Boost
That, along with a spray stain remover from Sainsbury’s has worked on almost everything. I even used it successfully on some things that were supposedly dry clean only. I often ignore cleaning instructions and it nearly always works out! It’s worth the risk when you get stuff for free.
It’s £1 max selling fees on eBay this weekend so I am hoping to get lots listed.
Selling our old electricals
Whilst I was down the shed fighting the spiders for the boot sale stock, I came across some old portable TVs/DVD players discarded by my daughters. Checking on eBay prices, they still sell for a worthwhile amount.
This pink one is currently selling for £45-£60. It works fine, so that will be going on this weekend. It’s great that someone will actually use it and stop it going to landfill too soon.
We actually have two others and even some of the old fat ones in the shed so I will be investigating potential value on those as well.
So, that is my money saving week in a nutshell. How has yours been? Do you have any exciting plans for this bank holiday weekend if you are in the UK?
*This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I will earn a small commission, so many thanks if you do.
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
On Monday we’re off to a local music festival, in all in aid of the local hospice and some roads in the town centre are closed off where they put stages and most of the pubs and bars have acts on. It’s a lovely event and excellent value at £7.50 and that’s for all day.
Frugal wise, I found a lovely pair of mules in a charity shop, which fit beautifully, but since I don’t own anything to go with them, I didn’t buy them.
You did well to resist! The festival sounds lovely. I enjoy that type of community event
My house looks like I’m preparing for a boot sale too – but no, I’m just assembling things my students will need to take back to uni in a couple of weeks! 😀
After going on a long walk that includes 2 big hills, I think I’ll relax at a local summer fair on Monday
By the way the link to the Soda Crystals Oxi Boost doesn’t work!
Thanks Julia. Will amend! Enjoy your summer fair.
Thank you for mentioning the Countess of Warwick show. I’ve never heard of it but we went today on your recommendation and thought it was fabulous – a proper old fashioned and lovely show with loads to see and do. it was very hot (tho they had water everywhere) so they had to cut back on some of the animal displays but we had a really super day out and the £ goes to good causes. Super glad you talked about it as we wouldn’t otherwise have gone.
So glad you enjoyed it! We are going tomorrow.
OOh how did you get on at your boot sale?
Not too bad. It was so hot though, thought I might expire!