Helloo!

Thanks everyone for your good wishes; hubby is fine and hopefully I will be too.

In the interim I set up another account here (I couldn't remember my username or password on this blog!): A Sea Change where I'll be posting now.

:)

I'm sorry, but for the time being I am going to have to call a hiatus on this blog.

I will be having hospital tests in the near future for what I hope is a minor problem. We are still waiting to hear about my husband's results. He is still poorly.

I'm not buying anything much because my mind is on other things, but I just feel that I don't want to have to think about updating here whilst there is so much going on.

So, thanks for all your comments and good wishes, and I'll see you later. :)

xx Mara

Weeks five and six

Sorry there was no update last week, we were away looking at houses in the West Country. We are heading off to Herefordshire in a week or so to look up there.

I didn't buy anything in week five, but fell off the wagon spectacularly in week six. Mum and I went to Rosemoor Gardens for the afternoon and I bought the tickets to go in, plus a Richard Mabey book (Beechcombings), a glass chicken with springy legs (if you tap her head she goes forward and back as if she's pecking (so cute! And, of course, not necessary at all!) and a notebook for mum.

I think I fell because my husband was ill all the time we were away and so he stayed at the cottage whilst I drove all over Devon and Somerset for three days. And now he is ill with something else and I have a bladder infection. It's been a stressful week so please accept my apologies for not much of an entry. I have to take him to the local hospital tonight for a CT scan. :( Fingers crossed. x

I think I spent £45 altogether, but will need to look it up, and will amend this post when things are less fraught.

Till next week... :)

Week Four - stress!

What a week. I've been out twice this week, the first time on Monday. Mum and I went to the nearby town so that I could pick up some more boxes and get some parcel tape. There was a strange man at the health food shop who told me I couldn't have any boxes, so we ended up with just the tape. I popped into the charity shops since we were there and, lo and behold, in Oxfam they were having the tail end of a fabric fortnight. Oodles of fabric stacked on the shelves. The temptation! I stood there for what seemed an age, picking bits up, putting them down, fondling a nice piece of tweedy material, all the while my brain whirring around and wondering whether or not to buy something.

The trouble was that there was so much choice I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted (I'm not a big fan of choice, we have too much of it I think and it clutters up our brains when we could be getting on with more important things, but that's another subject.) Also, since boxes and packing were so fresh in my mind, I suddenly became overwhelmed with the thought that I would be buying cloth then putting it immediately in a box for some future date after the move. So, I resisted.

By Thursday, our usual shopping day, I had had three days of the fabric shelves drifting through my mind and had decided that, whether it was being packed away or not, I would have another look and perhaps buy something after all. Fortunately or unfortunately I was in a real old grump when we set off to town. I think it might have been the strong wind that was blowing, that kind of weather always disorientates me a little.

I popped in a couple of other charity shops and had got myself all worked up about my year without buying challenge. I saw quite a lot of pretty things that I might otherwise have bought - including a lovely picture which for many weeks has been £10, now down to £2.50. Every time I have gone in the shop I have told myself that it was too expensive, and if it was cheaper... And then there it was! Temptation in front of me! I walked away in a bit of a smoulder determined not to succumb. By the time I got to Oxfam I had got myself into a right old tizz, asking myself what the point of all this was and why couldn't I just buy whatever I wanted, what did it all matter anyway?

Many a time I have criticized Oxfam for their exorbitant prices, but this week I had them to thank for keeping me from straying away from my goal. I was searching through that demon pile of fabric once again when I spotted some cross stitch kits in a basket on the floor. I stopped my search and knelt down to have a perusal. !! One kit, which not only had it been opened but was part done (!) was £6.99!! It wasn't a massive kit and I would guess if you were buying it brand new it would have cost something in the region of £10 - £12. Ridiculous. I then decided that if they were charging this kind of price for kits, then the fabric was probably a good price as well. Gone was my desire to spend and I left empty handed. So, hurrah, another week gone by and I spent nothing this time!

Finally, a little update on the clock I bought last time around. Since I preferred my old clock I decided to swap the mechanisms over and re-use the nicer clock. Alas, I started to do this whilst 1. The table was a mess and 2. I was in the middle of something else. Cue disaster and I am now the owner of two very broken clocks. *sigh* Until next week.

Oh, but before I forget! I was in Waitrose picking up a couple of grocery items and I wandered past their jar and container display. What caught my eye were some large, glass jars, tall and square edged much like three I bought a few weeks ago in a charity shop for 50p each. The retail price new? £9.50. Yes, that is EACH! Who would dream of paying such a ridiculous amount for a jar? Even if I had a no holds barred buying policy I wouldn't pay that price!

Total money spent this week: Nothing! My first week of not buying! Hurrah!
New things bought: None
Unnecessary purchases: None

Week Three

I don't know how it happened and afterwards I completely forgot about it until I got home...but I bought something. *shock* Total impulse purchase and I'm disappointed because in a previous charity shop I'd seen a lovely little picture frame with ladybirds round the frame which was only 50p and I resisted that because I don't need it right now, and it would only end up being packed away until we've moved. Even in the charity shop where I succumbed I was on guard against picking up unnecessary items and was in fact looking for a pasta jar. Not that I really need a pasta jar but I was doing a bit of tiling the other day to cover up a space left by the electricians about three years ago (yes, that's how fast things happen in our house!) and because the old tiles are in inches and the new in mm, it doesn't match up and is quite noticeable, so I wanted something to stand in front of it to hide the anomaly. And at least I would actually be using the jar as well, so not a total waste.

Instead I ended up with a stained glass picture to hang in a window! I picked it up just as mum was at the counter and I was distracted as I was chatting to her. I saw the picture, thought wow, this is nice and there it was...in my bag. Alongside this I bought a new kitchen clock, which we don't really need either because there is a clock on the cooker, but we had a clock previously which is broken so I thought to buy a new one, not thinking that we didn't really need a new one anyway. The window ornament will now be packed away until we move! What a silly thing to buy!

Clock and piccie (very nice one of birds and the sea) were £2.50 each. I also bought four sheets of paper new from the craft shop as I need to print off an official document and it said to use something more than ordinary A4. I don't agree that I really needed anything other than plain white paper, but in a world driven by looks and not substance, I understand the reasoning.

So, a disappointing week this week. Hopefully in future weeks I'll remember about being distracted and how susceptible I am to buying things when my mind is not focussed on the task in hand. But it's early days, and reminiscent of when I decided to never again accept a plastic bag - it took me a long while before I remembered to take a bag out with me every single time, now I do it as a matter of course.

Onwards and upwards! *grin*

Total money spent this week: £6.20
New things bought: none
Unnecessary purchases: Clock (£2.50) and picture (£2.50)

Week Two

A little later than anticipated, week two finished on Thursday just gone, but I've been mulling over whether or not to continue including costs associated with us moving house in my buy-nothing endeavours. The outcome is that I'm not going to. The further down the line we go, the sillier it is going to get as Fees and purchase price of a new house drive things up and I begin to look like someone with money to burn!

I've also been thinking about what else won't be included, and these are: groceries, toiletries, household cleaning items. Even if one day we become self-sufficient in fruit and veg, we will still need to buy in other food. Likewise toiletries, if I make our own I still have to buy the ingredients. And for cleaning things as well.

So, what exactly did I spend last week? A few pounds on food and drink that weren't strictly necessary. We had Estate Agents in last week and their valuations were way above what we had imagined, so a small celebration was in order! (Well, we thought so! *grin*) That was £18.05. On Thursday, I was so suffused with excitement about the valuations that I didn't even venture into charity shops.

So, there we are. Until next week. :)

Total money spent this week: £18.05
New things bought: Celebratory Food & Drink
Unnecessary purchases: The above! *grin*

First real week

Thursday is shopping day and being out and about, dropping into charity shops, makes me susceptible to SPENDING! Today was my first real test. Necessary items such as food, cleaning materials and toiletries are not included.

In the last week I have spent £8.65 on two second hand books I got from BB on the Creative Living forum, which left me with £1.35 out of my weekly spending allowance. I did see a lot of things I wanted to buy, and usually I would have just snuck an extra tenner from the cash machine and tell myself that spending £20 a week wasn't really too bad. But not today. In Save the Children there was a beautiful notebook with a dragon pattern on the cover. I picked it up, sighed lovingly over it but put it back because at £2.50 it was too expensive. I also have many notebooks already; I do not need another one, no matter how pretty. In Iain Rennie there were two large Port Merion containers. Very useful items, but again they were about £4 for the two and besides we have plenty of glass jars that can be used instead. In fact, we have a slow but steady supply of Barleycup jars which are good for most things so we don't need to buy anything like that, charity shop or otherwise. I also saw some of those terracotta jars with cork lids. I think they were three for £5 but again I didn't have the money and even if I had we don't need them.

In the end I bought a Hospice Lottery Ticket and deposited the 35p I had left in the collecting box. So, all money gone this week. I'm one of those people who finds it hard to keep money in their purse!

I was telling the lovely ladies in my health food shop about my goal of buying less this year and my disappointment with the containers. One of them suggested I decorate my glass jars to make them look pretty. A brilliant idea!

I am planning to meet Hamster soon (Eating the Seasons), so will need to put by some money for the ticket which, if we meet in London, will be £15.50 for a day travelcard. I think I might try and put by a bit every week for that instead of it using up 1.5 weeks allowance all in one go. I also might see if there is a bus. I know there is a commuter one which leaves the village at 6.15am and takes two hours, but I think I would rather go by train later in the day if that's the only other option.

Talking of Hamster, I expressed an interest in a treadle sewing machine that she had seen on her local freecycle. Much as I would love this, I turned it down. We don't have our own car and borrow my mum's at a cost of 25p per mile when we need to. To pick up the sewing machine would have cost £20, I would have a horrible drive to a town I really hate driving to, I don't like driving anyway and it would be a 1hr 40 minute round trip. Also, we are moving soon and I am trying to get rid of things not invest in large items of heavy furniture. So, no machine.

One thing I did do this week was to hire a skip and get someone in to sort out the garden. But I've since decided not to include moving expenses here.

Total money spent this week: £10
New things bought: None
Unnecessary purchases: Books and a Hospice lottery ticket!

Christmas

At Christmas 2007 I managed to buy most of my presents second hand. Alas, many were brand new and came from a high street store. It may seem early to start thinking about Christmas 2008, but one of the reasons I DID buy new was that I ran out of time - time to wait for suitable presents to appear in charity shops, time to see them come up on freecycle, etc. One of the great pleasures for me is to find something I have been searching for for a while in a charity shop; it gives me such a thrill to have the item in that way, so much more enriching than if I had popped into the high street and bought one because there were a thousand available.

I'm really looking forward to being more resourceful than ever in making do with what I have.

The Year of Living Without Buying

I have decided to make this year one where I make a bigger effort than ever to NOT CONSUME. This blog is going to be the place where I record my successes and failures, where I wrestle with conscience v. desire.

I have a feeling that I will most probably cheat every now and again - it is okay to get someone to buy something and give it to me as a present isn't it? *grin*

I also know that I won't be able to fulfil every need and want by charity shops, freecycling or swaps. But, here I am, giving it a go.