Frugal Friday

Another Friday and I am very happy because my course has broken up and there will be much less studying and more gardening for the next 4 weeks, hurrah !

There has also been very little spending as I have been too busy with working and studying, but my watch broke so that did need replacing ! The car also broke with a battery and a headlamp needing replaced, but MrShoestring did everything himself so that saved quite a bit in labour costs.

I changed books at the library and got a book in the post, which I'd previously paid for using Swagbucks, so no costs there. However, with a long weekend coming up I did fancy a few other things to read, so ordered them from the library rather than buying.

We got a free Sunday paper, which is great for lighting the fire after you have finished reading it and reused plastic bags after washing them out. I bought petrol on the other side of town and saved myself 3p a litre which is over 90p on a full tank. I also batched errands to save on fuel.

We cooked some meals using the slow cooker to save fuel and it has been warm enough some days to have the heating off during the day. I line dried all the laundry and made scones, chicken stew, spaghetti bolognaise, soup, bean burgers and quiche from scratch. We also ate leftovers for several lunches.

I was very interested in an article on the news about trying to avoid single use plastic as it is getting into the water supply, so MrShoestring and I thought we'd start to think of ways we could eliminate that from our shopping. We often re-use the plastic tubs etc. but for instance, the dishwasher tablets come in little plastic sleeves. so I'm sure we could do something to get rid of those, as that plastic just best thrown away. Could be an interesting challenge !