Frugal Friday means I have to think about frugality. It seems that in all the hullabaloo of life, I haven’t really thought about it recently. Maybe this post is a good way to re-ignite my fire to be frugal in everyday life.

The ways that I have inbuilt in my life to be frugal already:

Baking bread at home from the best ingredients saving on cost of bread as well as packaging.

Thanks to my sprouting garden I have stopped using salad greens. I do get some salad greens in my CSA box every other week, and that is good enough.

Not spending money on nails, or facials or makeup.

Buying clothes from thrift stores only when needed.

Library books, including from Little Free Library. I have a vast need of books, so having a library 5 minutes walk from me that gives me access to anything I want is amazing! And the Libby App for audiobooks is also my savior.

Buying shoes only when some working shoe in my life needs to be replaced. I don’t have a fashion need for shoes, only utilitarian. So they don’t tempt me at all.

Learning skills for my business from sources like You Tube and Udemy. These are either free or super cheap, but the amount of information, though not laid out in the easiest manner, or the most fancy looking templates, works for me. I am starting to realize this about myself: I am not a sucker for beautiful digital products, as long as I get what I need from them, and they are not in a spread sheet type overwhelming format. You know what I mean, right?

Eating homemade food for most meals for both health and cost and time saving reasons.

Saving money in all these realms (and more that I can’t think of right now!) gives me access to things that I do want in my life, and am ok to spend on- travel, nice restaurants once a week, yoga and gym, good quality ingredients for home cooking, live shows once in a while.

Are there areas me and my family could be better in? Most definitely. And writing about it brings that thought to my mind once again, so I can focus on being more mindful about spending. I think we can do better with buying treats from bakeries and farmer’s market- that is definitely one of our weakness as a family. But it also brings us joy. So I don’t know what to do about it…be more mindful in other ways that I can come up with I suppose? Something I need to think about and make progress in. 

But for now, just writing this post makes me feel good about this restart. And I hope to move forward from here on.