Five frugal things we’ve done this week:
Most of our time has been spent on finishing up the bathroom, which is very nearly complete. Woop! Lord Balders got a jump on the kitchen while I was working on the bathroom ceiling, and we’ll be moving on to that project next. No rest for us eh? Here’s how our money-saving week went.
1 – I got a great price for that eBay listing!
This surprised me – I ended up getting more than I thought I would for one of my son’s suits. Even better, this time I well and truly covered myself with the postage so that it wasn’t a question of scrimping on which service to use at the post office.
One tip, if your kids are like mine – always check the pockets of whatever clothing you’re going to sell! Enough said…
2 – A sunny shopping trip in Manchester
I think that, compared to many people, I don’t go shopping much… still, we do schedule our treats to make sure we don’t burn out on thriftiness.
I just didn’t fancy staying in to work away on the bathroom for another full day, so I suggested a shopping trip, and for those we usually end up in Manchester.
There were only a few things that I really wanted – a couple of blazers for work/weekends, and maybe a shirt and some trousers. I ended up with two white linen shirts for £10 and £9 each, and a blazer for £15 from H&M. I’m really happy with this, seeing as I’ve been pruning my wardrobe with a more minimalist outlook.
I’m only going to keep or buy clothes that I really love or need. Even accepting things given for free can be wasteful in a way… but that’s another long post entirely.
3 – Bagged some DIY bargains.
Whilst out in Manchester we picked up a new pendant light for the bathroom for only £3.99 in a sale in Clas Ohlson. I love the look of the black and white zig-zag flex! The long flex means we can hang the bulb further away from the ceiling rose, which is in an awkward spot.
We bought some swanky light switches from Screwfix, going through TopCashback as usual. That’s not very exciting, but Screwfix is often cheaper than B&Q, which is where we also do a lot of our DIY shopping (with our special cashback tool).
We did end up with a dilemma – should we buy an entire length of skirting board from B&Q when we only needed the equivalent of 10cm for corner mitres? Thankfully we dithered for long enough to find the offcuts of skirting board that we’d saved from finishing the other rooms! Yep, hoarding helps sometimes!
4 – Home haircuts yet again
I gave the guys their regular haircuts this week. Some weeks I don’t mention it as it’s not the most exciting event!
As for me, I’ve got afro hair, so I can’t go to any local hairdressers; this means that I can end up leaving my hair for way too long without a trim. Since I made my last batch of hair cream I’ve been looking after my hair much better, and as I was feeling adventurous a while back I gave myself a bit of a drastic cut, which was either very brave or foolhardy. Hey, having a lot of curl does wonders for hiding where I go wrong!
5 – Tried the lazy version of the Asda Price Guarantee hack
I managed to womble a Asda Price Guarantee coupon for £1.16 by doing one simple thing: separating out the items that were on special offer and that were reduced, and paying for those separately. Then we paid for the full price items. It took no thought whatsoever and made it more likely that our receipt would yield a high value coupon.
If you wanted to go that bit further, you could use the My Supermarket app to compare all prices before shopping.
Over to you…
How’s your frugal week been?
I’m linking up with Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week linky.
3 Comments
Sounds like a great week for you.
I shop at Asda all the time and assumed their price guarantee had stopped until another UKMB pointed out that it’s in TINY writing at the bottom of the receipts. Sneaky so-n-so’s.
Great tactics with the ASDA Price Guarantee!
Sounds like a good week for you and that is a great tip with Asda – I’ll remember that!