On the clothing front.... we all need new clothes at times and although we would love to buy green, sustainable and organic clothing the reality is that we are on a tight budget and just can't! I did go and browse around a rather lovely shop today full of these type of lovely clothes ....... but then looked at the price tag and only left with a £1.50, out of date, Permaculture magazine (much to the owners disgust!!)
Our conclusion is that buying the majority of our clothes from charity shops, car-boots and jumble sales is surely better than always buying brand new? So we feel we are doing our bit to recycle, re-use and keep these away from landfill for just a bit longer.
I tend to have a love / hate relationship with our local charity shops though, we live in a high tourist area, with lots of second homes so I guess they feel they can justify upping the prices a bit. The problem is that when a t-shirt from Asda costs less than an identical second-hand one from a charity shop, something isn't quite right. It feels very disheartening when you can't even afford anything from a charity shop!! Over the last year we have avoided all the local ones and gone out of our way to drop off any things we had for charity to a tiny little shop, run by a great group of older ladies, where they have a table set out for a proper cup of tea for anyone who drops in and their prices are amazingly cheap.....we always have a browse and come out with more stuff (who can say no to books at 10p??)
This week we have also discovered another little charity shop gem ...Salvation Army!! They have this great idea of a loyalty card, you drop off a decent size bag, you get £2 off your next purchase......not only that... when you buy anything over £5 your card gets stamped and when you have ten stamps you get £5 off too!! Genius!!
I hope they have plenty of space because we are now de-cluttering for Britain !!
It's even worse when it's the Asda T shirt that's in the charity shop for more than it was in Asda!!!
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