Compact year.......

Right looks like we are officially trendy and there is a word for us ! and a whole group of Americans did the same thing so it must be cool. I think they called it 'the compact year'. The basic idea being that you go a year without buying anything new, aside from food and toiletries.

I made my decision that I don't need to buy anything new for a year at my second consecutive weekend attending school galas. So much stuff that is still perfectly fine that people don't need/want any more. I filled two bags of kitchen bits and two bags of books for $4.00 , there were also a couple of rooms full of clothing and being a pretty average sized women I'm pretty sure I would have easily been able to fill a couple of bags in there too.

It's not going to be a true family year compacting because I'm guessing Nev is still going to buy his clothes new, but he's very tall and there tend not to be so many second hand clothes for men as there are for women. Men are more likely to avoid shopping at all costs and wear favorites until they die. Women however see shopping for new clothes as a hobbies so it's pretty easy to pick up near new items for me. I think the kids pretty much already live on hand me downs anyway, they are already so cool and living the compact life.

Speaking of Nev he has made the decision to sell his kayak , and spend the cash on wood for planter boxes, and a telly. Sad day for the kayak but as he pointed out he doesn't have time to use it anymore and it will just sit around and get sun damage anyway so might as well sell it while it's still worth a little bit. It will be really nice to get the planter boxes built around the deck as that will be the last of the clay gone before winter , hooray ! I'm also pretty excited about a telly too as apparently you can buy a little box for fairly cheap so that you can plug your external hard drive straight into your telly. So I can sit in the lounge and watch the telly all evening and Nev can sit in his office and play on his computer undisturbed all evening, ahhh married life.  

Nev and Charlie have just come out the other side of a cold and are both doing much better. I'm just starting to feel a bit run down so hope I can avoid it and Fins seems to be a bit whingey but one can never be sure if he's actually any worse than normal because he's sick or if I'm just less tolerant of his three year old whingeyness than usual as I'm feeling less than 100% .

Charlie wanting to help Fin and Soph's in the kitchen baking biscuits, I should have taken a photo from behind the bench too, he is standing on this little hippo footstool awww.