Second Frugal Friday of April 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 Friday Bailey and I went to the People Helping People bag sale. For $20 you can fill a large kitchen garbage bag with anything in the store. 
Afterwards I dropped Bailey off at home and ran a few errands to Home Depot, Target, Harbor Freight Tools, The Dollar Tree, and filled up my car with gas before heading home. 
I went to the Dollar Tree to stock up on vinegar, Spic & Span, and get more black poster board. With the cost of gas right now I'm stocking up more than usual just in case and filling my car up before coming home to avoid any further increases in gas prices. 
Look at this magazine I saw in the Target magazine rack, which is a sign of the times to me. 

The installation crew came on Monday and installed our new air conditioner. They did a great job even installing additional brackets to the outside of the house. 
On Tuesday I had an appointment for a dental cleaning and then Bailey and I went to Kroger in Georgia to do our monthly grocery stock up. 
On Wednesday the washer repair man came to check out the washer. The part cost $30 with labor running $140, so $179 total, paid in full with no stress and no debt. He had to order the part and will be back on Friday to install it. 
On Thursday I went downstairs and used Dad’s shop vac and vacuumed part of the shop. I wasn’t sure the shop vac would work as I didn’t know when the last time it was used, but it worked.  Afterwards I went outside to weed eat and do a little bit of raking. We have 15 acres here and the best way for me to maintain it is a little bit at a time. 
Other Frugal Things This Week...
- Entered all my receipts into Fetch & NCP- Earned multiple points for Microsoft Rewards (I have 42,898 points and am working on getting a $100 Kroger gift card)- Received a 5% discount on garbage service for next month's bill by writing a review for their FB page.
- Received a 10% discount for my birthday month for sharing my birthday with the same garbage service. 
Weekly Gasoline News
$3.79 per gallon SE Tennessee
$3.29 per gallon in NW Georgia 
Last Friday I filled up my gas tank and spent $49.25, which is unbelievable to me. We did not go to yard sales this week for that reason. My budget isn't going to allow me to buy that amount of gas every week to yard sale, so like last week we are staying home. 
When we went to Kroger on Tuesday, and I filled up my tank using Kroger rewards before leaving even though I had 3/4 tank full. With my discount and the halt on state gas tax in Georgia I paid $3.29 per gallon. 
If you're interested in an app on your phone to save on gas, “The Gas Index” promises real-time fuel savings. This is an AI app that has called over 19,000 gas stations to ask their current price per gallon and tells you whether the savings outweigh the extra fuel used getting there. There are all sorts of interesting statistics on their site to read as well. 
 The Cash Only Living blog is reporting gas at $4.95 a gallon with diesel costing $6.25 a gallon in Las Vegas this week. 
The Great Cleanup Continues...

The reason I went into Harbor Freight this week was to buy a magnetic sweeper, which I've been wanting to do for a while now. As I've mentioned before there are all sorts of areas in the pole barn and downstairs that have multiple nails, screws, staples, bits of wire, metal objects, etc. You can see one of those areas in this photo:

   

Here is a photo of some of what I picked up after just a few minutes:

This is a powerful magnetic tool for this purpose and definitely worth the $9.99 price tag. Now I won't have to worry about getting a nail in one of our tires. 
I am very happy to report that the last boxes of mail from the 70s & 80s have been gone through and disposed of now. When I started there were over thirty boxes to go through, so now I can concentrate on other areas that need cleaning up and continue the great cleanup. 
Freebies

In the Little Free Library at People Helping People, I picked up three books. Bernardin Home Canning Guide from 1975, Sorghum Treasures cookbook dedicated to the extension office of the University of Tennessee, and a book about Coker Creek, which is an historical community in the Cherokee National Forest located in the southern Appalachian mountains in southeast Tennessee.

:

Freebies from the dentist office this week included toothpaste, toothbrush, and dental floss picks. 

Savings of the Week
Our big savings of the week was on Zero Water Filters, which costs $17.44 each at Walmart and we buy regularly. Bailey found a post on Facebook Marketplace selling nine of the Amazon dupes priced at $30 from an Amazon pallet seller. That makes them $3.33 each, which is a great deal. The seller told Bailey he had a lot of people wanting to buy them.
Saving Money on Entertainment
Currently we are watching Paradise, which is a Hulu post-apocalyptic political thriller series starring Sterling K. Brown, who we loved watching in This is Us.  The show centers on a secret service agent investigating the President's murder within a secluded, high-stakes, underground bunker.
My Reading Nook ~ What I've been Reading This Week
From Consumer Affairs, Grocery shoppers need a strategy if they hope to stay within their food budget.
How was your week? Have you been decluttering? How are you managing fuel prices? We would love to hear all about it in the comment section. 

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