Wednesday 25 April 2007

Thrift Queen

I caught the end of a radio programme about a group of people who have given up shopping for a year. I didn’t hear it all so presume buying food and medicine is o.k. and , hopefully, soap. All else has to be repaired, made, bartered, swapped or bought second hand.

Since giving up full time work I’ve become something of a thrift queen. Apparently it’s quite fashionable, which is more than I can say for my trousers. I like the idea of not going to ‘the shops’. I no longer need all the smart clothes that lurk in my wardrobe and I’m not tempted by the fancy catalogues that flood through my door and into the recycling box. They never offer the mud coloured trousers and battered hats I really need.

There was a time when I kept an old pair of jeans and a tatty sweatshirt for weekend work. Now all my clothes have to do for outdoors. Slowly my entire wardrobe will become designated gardening clothes. I wonder where the line is between charmingly eccentric and the village bag lady. I guess I’m soon to find out.

Home hint for the slatternly blogger

:

A quick hoover round and a touch of furniture polish at nose height on the door frame and no one need know you’ve been on the computer all afternoon.

9 comments:

DevonLife said...

Oh yes the weekend gardening wardrobe has spread. Now when I have to go to meetings it is trauma trying to find something suitable (clean) to wear...

Suffolkmum said...

Lovely! I so know what you mean, since I stopped full time work I seem to live in gardening clothes. I will soon no doubt be embarrassing the children, but figure that will happen anyway, no matter what I do! Thanks for the housework tip!

Suffolkmum said...

By the way - hate to disillusion you, but I haven't got my archive sorted out yet - that's clever Devonlife.

Faith said...

I think as we get older we need less stuff - well I do anyway.

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

we sound quite alike on the clothes front (apart from my purchase today).. agree about hoover and polish, fresh flowers work wonders too

Pondside said...

I read about the 'Buy nothing for a Year' thing too. It sort of goes with the '100 mile diet' in which you eat nothing from farther away than 100 miles. What is with the emphasis on doing without? If we were to eat only what grew within 100 miles we'd be eating roots, berries, fish, deer and deer and more deer.

lixtroll said...

Matron has just popped in to tell you not to worry, the chat room has gone down temporarily owing to an error on Google which is preventing us cleaning out the fosses to make room for new posts!

You can still blog away merrily here on your own page, and to leave comments on all the others.

lixtroll said...

Matron is visiting again with an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

The chat-room is experiencing problems with overloading which we think is causing it to be marked as SPAM, which is in effect locking us all out :-

So in the mean time: each day please look out for the post called ANNOUNCE NEW BLOGS HERE and put your announcements in as comments on that post.

This will still leave space for one personal post per person which we can all comment on.

This is purely a temporary measure, we are keen to get the chatroom back to the weird and wonderful way it was going before - we are looking into various options at the moment (by the way, have you noticed that option is an anagram of potion) - WesterWitch! put down that cauldron!

Kitty said...

Good housework tip - will be need that this afternoon. Now trying to work out how to feed everyone all weekend without going to the supermarket!