1) We’re still saving to replace our living room, hall, stairs and landing carpet which was the first thing I wanted to tick off my house to do list this year but when I popped into TKMaxx last weekend with Miss Frugal I found some lovely Orla Kiely bathroom accessories which were so much cheaper than the ones I’ve been drooling over online.  They had some great orla Kiely towels too which matched the accessories so I thought I’d do a mini makeover on our en suite bathroom which still looks almost the same as it did the day we moved in.

I got a big towel for £12.99, a smaller one for £7.99, a soap dish for £4.99 and a tumbler for £7.99 which is so much less than the RRP.  I love Orla Kiely and I was very empted to buy similar accessories from her range from John Lewis at full price – it was only Mr Frugal exclaiming ‘HOW MUCH?’ in the middle of the bathroom department when I showed him a towel that stopped me.  Even he’s pleased with my bargain bathroom makeover!

2) Miss Frugal has sat down with me this week and made a plan to earn money for our New York trip bless her.  She’s already made a deal with her Dad that she can have his 1ps, 2ps, 5ps and 10ps out of his wallet every day (he’s way softer than me ha ha) and she’s asked me if there are any jobs she can do to earn some more money.

We have a family rule whereby the kids are expected to help out with jobs and they both have daily and weekly jobs to complete but as she’s asked if she can earn some extra money, I’ve agreed she can do the washing each week for £5 and she can do one of her full house cleans every fortnight for £10.  She’s added this into her little spending money forecast and she’s still short of the amount she wants so she’s made a list of DIYs that she’s like us to do for the blog and intends to charge me £5 for each one!

I’m so pleased that she’s trying so hard to save – the jar above is where she puts her money as she gets in and she has another one which is filled with the dollars she’s been buying every time she half fills the first one.

3) I’ve been fighting a viral infection for a couple of weeks now and my Dr just told me to come back in two weeks if it didn’t clear up as antibiotics don’t help a viral infection apparently.  I was told by someone at work that it might help my throat feel better if I bought some zinc and vitamin c lozenges so I popped off to Holland and Barrett to buy some.  They were £3.39 but on offer for just £1 with any other purchase in the shop so I picked up a super cheap lip balm at the till and bought that and the lozenges for almost £1.50 LESS than the cost of the lozenges on their own.

4) I’m trying to get better at buying things in bulk when I see them on offer and when I saw the Alpen Light bars that I love (and are great for Slimming World) on offer for a pound in Tesco this week I decided to stock up!

They’re usually £1.99 which is more than I like to pay but they’re a bargain at half of that price!

5) Master Frugal is a HUGE football fan and knows pretty much everything about his team, Boro and has always loved to watch them play.  The problem is that we can’t get him a season ticket as he’s too young to go on his own and Mr Frugal works most match days so he can’t take him.  We also don’t have Sky Sports because of the ridiculous amount of money it would cost us just to watch the odd football match.

In the last year or two we’ve been introducing him to the joys of listening to the match commentary on the radio which is something we’ve always done, often even when the match is on sky because our local radio station always has amazing commentary.  The commentators have a genuine love of the club and their passion, and often frustration can’t help but shine through in everything they say.

I enjoy listening to a match so much more than watching it on the TV thanks to the excellent commentary but Master Frugal has always seen the radio as a bit old fashioned and not as interesting as watching the TV but recently, he’s seemed to appreciate the radio more than before.  Last weekend, he went downstairs and brought the radio up so he could listen to the match and he actually came in and said that he didn’t understand why Boro fans paid for Sky Sports when ‘they could listen to real fans and not those old men in the studio who couldn’t care less about Boro’.

So, while lots of fans choose to pay a fortune for Sky Sports, we’re quite happy listening to it old school on our radio and if you want to get an idea of the passion we hear when we’re listening, just watch this this video from 3minutes and 46 seconds to see for yourself.

(Sadly Ali Brownlee, who did this commentary died last year and it’s a huge loss to the club as a whole but the team who do the commentary now are almost as passionate as he was.  As a Boro fan myself, I can’t listen to the commentary above without getting goosebumps and as an Ali Brownlee fan, I can’t listen without getting a lump in my throat.)

That’s a bit of a sad note to end on isn’t it?

I’ll share these flowers with you to cheer you up – they certainly cheered me up considering they were reduced from £5 to £1.25 and they’re still going strong five days later!

As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing what frugal and thrifty things you’ve been up to this week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video.  Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.

You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.

You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with us by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:

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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The post Five Frugal Things I’ve done this week {20 January 2017}…. appeared first on The Diary of a Frugal Family.