2025 Frugal Living Challenge

Gem-gem

Good evening everyone, 
BF done £90 profit made. My gooseberry jam flew off the stall. It does help that the supermarkets don't sell it. 

Two black sacks, one of craft materials and one of garden/ DIY resources bagged up and ready to go to a charity shop. 

Made a batch of strawberry ice cream today:
One recipe: strawberries, sugar, whole milk, double cream and vanilla. (This is quicker as you don't need to make a custard first). 

Another recipe: milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, strawberries and double cream. 

Spent afternoon crocheting. 

Hope you have all had a good weekend. 

Siebrie

"BF done £90 profit made." I've not visited this forum for some time, and the BF initials threw me (and I seem to have a dirty mind )

Elisheba

Hi all,

Just popping up to say I have started a new thread on the Old Style Board that I thought might be of interest and useful for all of us on here.  Tips and tricks for reusing whatever we can -

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6607863/reusing-and-repurposing-frugal-ideas-and-tips-on-how-to-reuse-and-repurpose-virtually-everything#latest

kimwp

Siebrie said:

"BF done £90 profit made." I've not visited this forum for some time, and the BF initials threw me (and I seem to have a dirty mind )

The BF initialism throws me every time (boot fair?), though I confess to being unsure what naughty thing it could stand for and I thought I had a dirty mind!

Frugaldom

Good evening, albeit very late. Been busy here just trying to keep things watered in the heat but it's working well with the bilge pump on a leisure battery with a small solar panel to recharge it. Recycling pallets is a popular pastime for us so everything's housed in a pallet wigwam with plastic cover over the top (cut from the old poly tunnel).

In the garden, the herbs are going wild, the first peas have firmed, there are flowers coming on the tomato plants and strawberry plants and I can see the first tiny cucumbers forming on the plants @Prudent brought me.Everything is growing well but I'm still behind with seed sowing again because of the lack of decent compost. More digging needed.

Grocery spend for May is still under £45 but my diet is atrocious as I hate waste so much... So I eat far too many pastry & baked goods from olio. Now needing to break into the clothing budget for some new-to-me workwear.

Keep up the good work, everyone. This frugal living malarky becomes quite a happy-go-lucky lifestyle choice and with friends with similar beliefs, it can be a lot of fun. We had a 'ladies who lunch' get together in the hut today with a heap of homemade chips. If any of you can get here, please feel free to get in contact to arrange another meet-up. (SW Scotland)

Prudent

Ooh @Frugaldom that is my kind of ‘ladies that lunch’! 

I am so sorry for not posting for ages, time has just flown away with me. Like the other growers on the thread, it has been a busy time for planting, watering and bringing plants on. I was up north for a week as I am an unpaid carer for my daughter and have to travel back and forward to see her. I have also been taking part in some medical research screening for one of my medical conditions, which has involved travel to a university facility about two and a half hours away. So all in all, a busy time.

Some frugalling has fallen by the wayside a wee bit. I had an early start at university yesterday and forgot to make a packed lunch or have a drink with me. Thankfully, they gave me some water when I was there. I headed out at lunchtime, resigned to buying lunch. I passed Whittards, which were having a blitz on drink sampling. I must have tried at least 15 mini cups of various teas and hot chocolate. I then used my O2 app to buy a hot pizza slice for £1 and nipped into a supermarket and got an apple for 35p. Not a healthy lunch, but I have a fridge filled with two Lidl veggie boxes, so I am making amends at home. 

Being busy means I haven’t bought much, so money saved there. I have a couple of weddings coming up, including one of someone I am close to, and the second one is an evening invite for a friend of my partner.  I have been hunting the charity shops for outfits for a while. Just before going away, I got a lovely Monsoon dress for £7.95, which will be ideal for the evening invite. On Saturday, I found a matching Romans dress and jacket which I loved for £15, which will be perfect for the day invite. I have shoes that will go with both, so I need to find a couple of bags. OH painted the main bedroom while I was away. We were slightly short of paint, so I was resigned to buying more this week. As I left the charity shop on Saturday, I spotted an unopened tin of the exact make and colour of paint sitting by the door for £5! Even OH, who does not ‘get’ my love of charity shops, was impressed. 

Thank you for the link to the thread @Elisheba.

Gem-gem

Hi, just a quick pop in tonight. Yes, BF stands for Boot Fair 😀

Gem-gem

Good evening everyone, 
Been a very busy week, have been back to DM's bungalow clearing more out. My DB took all that he and my DS wanted. I brought back some more BF items, they are sitting in the corner of my kitchen. Weather a little iffy for Sunday morning. 

Did a stupid thing yesterday. Had a hospital appointment but accidentally went to the wrong hospital. Turned up fifteen minutes before my appoint. The letter had the correct hospital but I would have bet £1 million pounds that they said the hospital that was next to my DM's apartment. I tried ringing the hospital but couldn't get through so rang my drs and told them what happened. 

Today, made bread and butter pudding with 50% hot crossed buns. Yum! Yum!

Quantaqa

@Gem-gem, I love bread and butter pudding.  I think I might add that to my list for next week to make.

I am not managing to be on here as much as I woud like.  I feel like the more I am contributing to this thread the more focussed I am.  Hoping to be on more regularly. 

I have been using Gumtree/facebook marketplace to buy some preloved furniture to do up a bedroom.  I got 2 beautiful bedside cabinets that the seller had upcycled really well and yesterday I picked up a large outdoor rocking chair for the garden.  It was well priced I think at £15 as I have seen similar in garden centres going for much more.  It will need a repaint, a job I enjoy doing, whch I will do when they weather is dry again.  Buying preloved/second hand is about being frugal but also about sustainability for me.  I'm tying not to buy new and instead use items that already exist and can be reused instead of going to landfill.

Today is a day at home and I'm planning on doing some baking for lunches and snacks to do us through the week ahead.  I'll probably do some fruit scones, chocolate muffins and cookies.  I'm going to do a loaf of bread as well.  Other jobs today are just keeping on top of housework, ironing and putting another load of laundry on.  I am going to miss putting my washing out on the line to dry, I've been taking it for granted the last few weeks.

Gem-gem

@Quantaqa, I was lucky that when I bought my first house I started off with lots of white goods and furniture from my Nan. My bed/ bedroom furniture/ bookcase I bought new from M&$ on 0% finance and I am still using them 25 years later. I hope that I will only have to buy this once in my life time. In our other bedroom we have furniture from DH parent's house. Recently, we upgraded our dining table, I swapped it with my DM, she had the one that I got from my DN and is older than me. 

A neighbour came and looked through the tools that I will be selling tomorrow, even though I said he could just have them, he gave me ten pounds.

Today, DH and I hopped onto a train to London and went to an afternoon music concert for £10 each.  We then had a To Good to Go snack for £5 each. On the app they said the meal would have been £15 each but when we got to the bar with Turkish food it said on the menu that the dish was £7 each!! We had three tea / hot choc drinks each in the Spoons for £1.70 each. Only other expense was my return train ticket of £8.