Freebies, Frugal Measures and Frugal Fails 20

Here's a summary of this last couple of week's efforts to be frugal.

Freebies and Frugal Measures

1) I used two more £8 off a £40 spend vouchers at Waitrose, using them to mostly buy lots of edible gifts for people for Christmas. One was used for the last grocery shop of the month, but I shopped very carefully, as it's very easy to rack up a big bill in this store.

2) OH cut LB's fringe himself, which saved me paying for it to be done at the hairdressers.  It was long overdue and he did a good job. I'll get it all cut properly in the Christmas holidays when it's quiet.

3) I bought this brand new still in packaging set of these IKEA SKUBB draw organisers for £3 from the CS. 

I needed some more of these to organise my sweaters and gym gear. My clothes are all, as opposed to just some, now looking much more tidy and organised, which I find helps when it comes to putting away the laundry.

4) This last few weeks, I've been regularly buying bits and bobs of food to go towards Christmas, whilst out doing our weekly grocery shop. I'm hoping it will help spread the cost and mean we don't miss out anything essential when doing a big shop on Xmas Eve, by which time some things might even be out of stock. (We're travelling to a cottage in Yorkshire on 23rd December, so we will have to do most of our shopping on 24th December).

5) I used a £5 loyalty voucher from ASOS to go towards a birthday present for LB whose birthday is three weeks after Christmas and OH took advantage of the Black Friday 5 day sale to buy some Dr Marten's for her for school, which saved over £20 off the normal retail price. This definitely made them better value. I'm hoping that they will last her the next two years as she is very heavy on shoes and the heels on these shouldn't hopefully wear down too quickly.

6) I received two free packs of seeds with my Kitchen Garden magazine.  Unfortunately, they were aubergines and leeks, neither of which I like or grow, so I'll be donating them to the next Give & Take.

7) I bought an online Visual Merchandising course on Udemy for just £10 on Cyber Monday.  It has 43 lectures on the subject and provides you with a certificate on completion.  A complete bargain, as it normally costs £40. (I was due to go on a course at work, but my manager is now going instead, so I thought I'd take it into my own hands to become more educated in this area and for £10 it's worth doing). I'm actually quite excited as I've never done an online course before.

Frugal Fails

1) I impulse bought a new winter coat whilst at the Mall, and then had to buy a 5p bag in which to carry it home, as the bags I had with me weren't big enough.  I try not to impulse buy, but on this occasion I was really happy with the coat, so I'm not giving myself too hard a time.

2) I had to buy another 10p plastic bag to carry home more shopping from Waitrose.  I really hate doing this, but on occasion (albeit they have been more frequent recently) I have to do it.

3) I bought some boots from ASOS a couple of months ago and after only a few wears the heels are almost worn down.  This is very annoying. I've found that it seems to happen quite a lot with shoes these days, both mine and LB's. I am convinced that manufacturers don't use hard wearing enough heels, expressly so that you have to buy more pairs of shoes.

I know this because I got some shoes re-heeled for LB once and the cobbler used non-heavy duty heels and they wore down very quickly too.  For a bit more money it's definitely worth getting heavy duty ones, and manufacturers should be using these as standard. It's very disappointing and shoddy. I will be replacing them with the aforementioned heavy duty heels although I am annoyed that I need to do it so soon.