Five Frugal Things We’ve Done 8/06/18

Five frugal things we've done, including fixing a Flymo lawnmower and making homemade cosmetics.

Five frugal things we’ve done this fortnight:

Over the last few weeks we’ve actually started to do some long-awaited shopping, as we’ve built our savings up to a place where we feel comfortable with letting the purse strings loosen a bit. We still tried to get the best value we could though, so here are some of our highlights from our frugal fortnight, including fixing a Flymo lawnmower:

 

https://youtu.be/t4W2s7wuMb8

 

Bulk buying ingredients for homemade cosmetics

Remember my DIY hair cream recipe? Well, it was time to make some more, but I wanted to have a go at making lots of different hair and skin recipes, as well as cosmetics. I went to Amazon and Etsy and bought:

1kg of cocoa butter

1kg of shea butter

1kg of beeswax

500g of Irish moss

10ml of vitamin E oil

 

I’d already bought one bottle of aloe vera juice from Holland & Barrett in the half price sale in store, so that was a bargain!

These were the cheapest suppliers I could find after quite a bit of shopping around, although prices can change. I made a batch of hair lotion one Sunday and I barely made a dent in all my supplies, which was fantastic. I’m going to be trying all sorts of homemade cosmetics recipes in the next few weeks, and I’ll be back with the results.

 

 

 



Free cider from CheckoutSmart

One of the great things about CheckoutSmart is the opportunity to try new things for free. We picked up some free Brothers Rhubarb And Custard cider from Tesco this week, which was very welcomed!

 

 

Reduced dishwasher tablets

Now that we’re settling into our new life of luxury thanks to our dishwasher, we still look out for ways to trim the costs. On our last trip to the supermarket I spotted some reduced own-brand dishwasher tablets, which were only reduced because of the boxes being bashed around. It was too good to be true, so we bought two of them.

Eventually, though, I want to look into making my own dishwasher detergent to see if it actually works out cheaper. Stay tuned for that one!

 

 



A £2.50 TopCashback bonus!

As I always log in to TopCashback before shopping online, I noticed a limited time offer for a £2.50 bonus. I bought my shea butter from Etsy and received 4% cashback, and qualified for the bonus, bringing the cost of my purchase down. Not bad for next to no effort!

 

 

Fixing a Flymo lawnmower ourselves

I say “ourselves”, but this was my husband’s accomplishment. We were given an electric Flymo mower several years ago, and the drive belt snapped whilst my husband was mowing the lawn for the first time in our new home. I did think, well, we’d got it for free and got a good few years out of it, so maybe it was time to get a new one… but he was determined he’d fix it.

He found a replacement drive belt on eBay and it was a quick fix – a fully functioning mower for less than £7. Now we can go back to feeling guilty about not mowing the lawn!

 

 

 

Over to you…

What are your frugal achievements this week? Let me know in the comments below!

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

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3 Comments

    1. Definitely Becky, when you make it yourself you can add exactly what you like and tailor it just for your needs 🙂

  1. Another frizzy haired person here! I’m going to see if I can get all the stuff to make some hair cream too.
    And I’ve never tried checkout smart so I need to check that out too!

    Thanks for some great ideas!
    Tx

    Ps. If you don’t want to mow the lawn get some hens, mine have removed my lawn entirely!

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