Michelle Boyle, 47, has saved around £3,500 by picking up free furniture and decorations for her home, using websites like Freecycle, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace to find items that other people are giving away.
Her best finds include a Dyson fan worth £220, a brand new mattress with a retail price of £180, and a £460 DFS sofa. She has also picked up DFS chairs worth £400, £150 Aldo bar stools, a £150 lamp and £200 dining room chairs - all for free.
How she finds the free items
Michelle, from Scunthorpe, said: "You can do up your whole house, if you look in the right place. Some of things you can get are new, but if not they are always in good condition. It surprises me that people get rid of stuff for free in such good condition."
Her bargain hunting began in 2014, and she has since found all sorts of treasures, including a double mattress still in its packaging. "It still had all the plastic on and hadn't been opened - it should have been £180," she said. "It's an expensive, thick one. I jumped at the idea - we had a job of getting it in the car but we got there!"
Friends and family follow suit
Michelle's friends and family have started picking up their own free finds. "I remember at one point I got some decorating stuff and I was able to decorate half my house and it looked stunning afterwards," she said. "My son has just moved out and I told him about it and he's going to do it to kit his house out."
The DFS sofa and chairs she found were in "mint condition" and worth £860 altogether, she said, while the "ornate" lamp for her living room should have been £150.
Her top tips for freebie hunting
Michelle's number one tip is to get on the sites at the "right time" - as soon as the subscription email is sent out. Freecycle, a website that allows people to trade free items and encourages reuse in local towns, currently has 12 million members and operates in 5,333 towns. After you input your area and sign up, the site sends emails rounding up the best items in your local area, usually between 2am and 10am every morning.
For Facebook Marketplace, Michelle said it is "a case of hitting it at the right time", checking it every 45 minutes when she is hunting for a freebie.
Michelle has estimated she has saved £3,530 on items including a Furniture Village dining room chairs (£200), bedside cabinet (£30), chair frame (£6), Orthocare mattress (£180), fold up chair (£10), Tesco bar stools (£150), up lighter lamp (£150), oak dresser (£375), single mattress (£100), drop leaf table (£692), London canvas print (£75), cord bucket chair (£429), DFS cord sofa (£460), cord swivel chair (£399), Anne Stokes picture (£24), pine display unit (£175) and Ikea TV stand (£75).
Other free items include John Frieda hair products worth £100 and a Silent Night bed for the caravan worth £150. Michelle also uses TooGoodToGo for discounted food, such as a £12 carvery for £3.99. "We get food from Cooplands and it's £3.30 a bag and there are times when you may only get a few bits in maybe say 3 or 4 bits but we have got some bags on occasions that's had up to 8 or 9 bits in and they have lasted for days," she said. "In my opinion this kind of thing will help families again who are not so well off or struggling."
