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Our week’s been capped off by that unfortunate scourge of the modern age – the surprise drop in wifi. Our internet connection’s still there, but we can only access it with an ethernet cable, which means I’m having to perch on someone else’s computer to get this post out. It’ll be a rushed one, but at least it’ll make it out there!
Here are our frugal things for the fortnight:
Charity shop clear-out
We knuckled down and cleared out even more clothes and books we had earmarked for eBay and this time, gave them to our local charity shop. Why is this a frugal thing – shouldn’t we have hoarded them to sell ourselves?
Well, selling on eBay is a great way to raise cash, but it’s never going to be our thing – not selling en mass. And lots of the things we had were things that were handed down to us that we didn’t want or need, so we’re helping someone else to make the frugal choice and also promote a more minimalist lifestyle for ourselves.
TopCashback £2.50 bonus
This week TopCashback* offered a £2.50 bonus on a £5 spend, so we both opted in to the promotion and bought some items on our list. I got some sculpture tools for £7.99 and Ste bought a present for Little B’s present day.
Designing a cheap cat-proofing system for the garden
There are some pretty fancy cat containment systems for your garden, but we can’t stretch to those in our budget at the moment. Instead, we’re going to try a more basic DIY setup with a massive roll of galvanised wire that cost us just over £20.
We’ll see if the next few weeks’ cat-proofing efforts can withstand the test of the three kitties’ assault when they’re let out to test it.
Finding a cheaper source of silicone for crafts
I’ve been using regular silicone caulking tubes for making up DIY moulds since last year, but buying a tube for around £2.50 from Home Bargains was starting to get pretty costly over the long run. I managed to find acetoxy cure silicone at a plumber’s merchant for £1.80 per tube.
It doesn’t sound like much, but you still need quite a few tubes if you’re going to make a big mould… or make a lot of mistakes! It also comes in handy around the house, for doing things like making a water-retaining lip around our kitchen sink and bathtub.
A bit of low-level comping
Comping really isn’t my thing but in the last few weeks I’ve entered a few competitions – first, on the Whole Earth peanut butter website (because I’m hooked), as well as via Shopmium… and also through Curve, although I’m not sure if that was during the previous fortnight.
Shopmium’s and Curve’s promotions were more to do with making purchases during a specified timeframe, so they were totally easy and painless. You never know if these things will pay off, but they can help you stay in the bargain-hunting mindset!
Over to you…
I hope you’ve found some money-saving hacks over the past few weeks!
