First Frugal Friday of January 2026

Welcome to Frugal Friday
Each Friday here at Frugal Workshop, I love sharing the frugal wins, quiet savings, and simple strategies that helped us stretch our budget over the past seven days. It’s a gentle look back at the small things that make a big difference. 
My Frugal Week
Last week it was so warm here during Christmas that we were sorry we put plastic over the windows already. We would have turned the a/c on if we hadn’t had them covered. We were wearing shorts on Christmas because it was so warm. Pictures I saw of others get togethers showed many others wearing shorts too. We ended up opening the back door and putting a fan in front of it to help circulate air. 
The cold weather returned by the beginning of this week though with temperatures in the lower thirties. 

Last Friday I took down our porch Christmas tree and stored it back downstairs. We initially put it up because we thought about replacing ours inside with it, but we deemed the one inside to still be good enough for another year, so we turned our porch tree into a snack tree for all our delivery and service people. 
We saved the wrapping paper from our Christmas unwrapping to use as packing material for Bailey’s online business. She sells a lot of hard goods and needs all the packing material she can get. 
We played Dirty Santa at the family get together on Sunday. The gifts Bailey and I brought were a huge hit and claimed multiple times, which makes the exchange even more fun to me. 
Health & Exercise
Santa brought me a walking pad for Christmas this year. I was on it first thing last Friday and walked for twenty minutes and ended up with over 10,000 steps by the end of that day, which is one of my goals for 2026 to get in 10K steps or more every day. 
Saving on Electric
Well, we didn’t turn on the air even though we wanted to, so that’s a win for saving on the electric bill this week. 
Saving Money on Entertainment
Bailey and I had the best time after Christmas, which is the time of year where she takes the week off and we do fun things together. 
This year we went through all of our board games, especially the ones we picked up second hand in 2025, played them to determine if they were keepers or not, and placed any unworthy ones in the McKays bag to trade. 
We used to play games every Saturday night, but have let that lapse this past year. But we love it so much that we’ve decided to get back to this in 2026. 
What I've been Reading This Week

Struggling families warned of ‘devastating’ increases in heating costs this winter. ~ Those who use electricity like we do will see an average cost of $1,233, up 12.2% from last year. Yikes! 

In Conclusion …
Prices on several items remained higher than we were willing to pay in 2025. We stopped eating out as the price of restaurant meals, especially when compared to food cooked at home, were too high for our frugal hearts. 
In 2026 our frugal ways will be out in full force. We will strive to do even better this year than last year and I hope you’ll be here with us on the journey. We hope that 2026 is a good year for you with many blessings along the way. 
How was your week?

Thank you for dropping by my frugal blog, you are always welcome here. 
We would love to hear all about your week in the comment section.

Belinda 🫶 💕 Homemaker at Heart 💕 ~ Living within our Means ~My Linktree
~ She looketh well to the ways of her household ~Proverbs 31:27