Five Frugal Things I Did This Week

Click on the picture to read about the frugal things I've done this week to save my family some money!

Some weeks, opportunities to save money pop up more easily than other times. As we’ve started buying more items for the house to complete our DIY projects, we’ve had more chances to save some cash, and this week we’ve nabbed a few bargains!

It’s not just frugality through saving on shopping though: we’ve done a few things as a matter of routine that help to keep our pennies in our pockets. Have a look and see what you think of our frugal efforts.

1 – Home haircuts

I’ve been cutting my son’s hair for so long I can hardly remember not doing it. As for my husband, it took a while to convince him. He wasn’t buying the “trust me, I’m a sculptor” line at first!

Eventually he caved and after being pleased with the results and realising how much we could save, I’ve been cutting his hair for two years. I dread to think how much we’d be spending on haircuts for both of them otherwise.



 

2 – Cut-price privacy

To increase privacy downstairs in our front room, we ordered this reflective window film from Amazon, which was £23.46, but wait! Since I’d been building up our Amazon gift card balance through getting my payouts through TopCashback and Quidco, I only had to pay £11.73, and the other £11.73 came out of our gift card balance. Yep! This was half paid for with cashback I’d earned from shopping somewhere else!

 

3 – Free fiver from Paypal

I got an email from Paypal earlier in the month offering me a £5 bribe (sorry, incentive) to use them to make a purchase before the end of March. I didn’t have anything in mind, but I saved the offer anyway, and it came in handy when we suddenly got the bug to finish off our doors – we used it for buying spade bits, tubular latches, and hacksaw blades from Screwfix, which should have come to £17.55, but cost us only £12.55. All for remembering to take up an offer!

Fitting a tubular latch to a vintage door.

 

4 – Low-key couponing

I had a good time with APG coupons this week – one came to £3.16! I don’t usually get very high value coupons but hey, every little helps… and these receipts were all my own, and not found elsewhere.



 

5 – Freshening up upholstery for free

We spent the meagre sum of £175 to get ourselves a long-awaited pair of sofas, but I thought the slight staining on the arms would be something I’d have to trade as a part of the price of buying second-hand. But no! A bit of free elbow grease on my part (and a tiny amount of washing up liquid) worked miracles in freshening up the upholstery – makes me wonder why the previous owners hadn’t done it themselves!

Next project – throw pillows from the leftover fabric I used for the dining room blind.

 

What about you – how’s your frugal week been?

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.

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9 Comments

  1. Great savings with the coupons, PayPal offers and Amazon giftcard. Always amazes me how TopCashback and Quidco will pay me to go shopping – really appreciate that money for nothing!

  2. I too have cut my daughters hair and am wondering at present whether to grow her fringe out or not. Love the sound of those cushions already you are going to make.

    1. I’ll have to make sure I make those cushion covers quickly to get them into another frugal week post! 🙂

  3. You are savng more than you realize with your home barbering. My husband is the family barber. Saves me so much time and money. Most people do not factor in transportation costs with the haircut, tip nor the value of their time. I figured with two boys, $15 per haircut, plus $5 tip for the two and fifty mile round trip at about 3 hours valuing my day off time at $20/hour made the trip to the barbers a $100 outing, more if we ate out as often the time would coincide with a lunch. Each and every month, this is well over a grand a year, yikes! Takes my husband about ten minutes on each haircut for my boys, and I dont need to leave the house. And I am not stuck wasting time and money going to the salon, I take a seat every 6-8 weeks and hubby trims my locks. He does a great job and I get compliments. My mother thought it was odd I would ask him to do it, but after a really bad haircut at the salon she had gone to that was sold and prices went up over 30%, mom asks my husband to cut hers while she was visiting and he was giving the boys their monthly haircut. She smiled and said $45 saved with a great looking haircut that was as she wanted, not what the stylist decided to do to her hair. So it is not just the boys who can save money with getting haircuts at home, huge savings on my part by staying out of the salon. And I do not miss the bad, too short haircuts.

    1. It’s great when you have someone in your family who can cut everyone’s hair, especially long hair! Very good points about the cost of the entire outing. 🙂

      1. It sure is, especially the convenience of it. This Last Friday I told hubby the boys needed haircuts. We had a busy day planned Saturday and after dinner, bith boys got haircuts and showers right after. I did not have the tme in my day to run them to the barbershop. I was doing laundry while my hubby got out his tools and did his artistry. I had plans for pictures after church Sunday, so I wanted them to look their best. And they did, both got compliments on how handsome they looked Sunday morning. One friend commented how she wished she was able to do her children’s haircuts, but she messed up a couple times when she tried and there is no way her children will let her near them with the shears. I told her my boys fired me as well, but thankfully they liked my husband doing them, so I still get the benefit. I enjoy the bonding time when hubby capes me, combs out my hair, sections it and trims a small amount off my ends to get the splits and keep the ends neat. He admires my long hair that reaches past my elbows, so I know he won’t get scissor happy on me. And my hair is my personal space, I never liked going to the salon and having a stranger yanking my hair or jerking my head around. My husband is very gentle with my hair and he is very meticulous in getting the ends even. While some women cringe at the thought of letting their husband cut their hair, the thought of someone else aside from him cutting my hair scares me, especially when I see a friend or coworker that has gotten a bad haircut.

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