What works for us is to save regularly into accounts which are not our regular current/household account.. This way the money is kind of out of sight out of mind. We set up a regular savings account with EBS to fund large college expenses for our kids and this money can be accessed on maturity as well as at another time during the year without penalty. We also pay monthly into UB's high interest deposit account - a smaller amount monthly but it is a bit more flexible and you can access your money anytime - the good interest is only up to 15,000 but something like this might work for you if you set up a regular debit.
If you have been saving 50 euro per month and dont think you are getting anywhere fast, try saving 80 or 100 into an account like this and see if you can adjust your other expenses accordingly. Anyway, I think as you are already saving for a mortgage, another account for the irregular medium sized expenses would be a good idea - it works for us to separate our long term, mid term and short term goals and savings. .