Sunday 1 January 2012

Two hours and....

...fifty eight minutes after waking. The amount of time Luke and I lasted before we discovered we 'needed' to buy something. Luke wants to get some footage off his camera so he can do some editing on the computer but he needs a 4 pin male firewire to male USB cable to do so, he doesn't have one. The conversation went something like this:

Luke: ''I need a ..... cable to get the footage off the camera"'
Me: 'Hmmm, well you can't buy one"
Me: '''Have you checked Gumtree or Freecycle?"
Luke: "'yeh, can you go onto eBay for me''

We both search ebay and they are all brand new...

Luke: ''You can get them for a couple of buks new"
Me: ''Hmmm I guess we could just use last nights lotto winnings, then we aren't spending money..''
Luke: ''Yeah ok"

End of conversation for about 20 minutes.....Now how easy was that! How easily did we give up looking and resort to the buy it new mentality! After about 20 minutes I was sitting here at the computer and I thought, hang on, the point isn't that we are not technically spending money, the point is, we are so programmed into consuming new that we don't put the effort in to sourcing more environmentally friendly options. I'm sure there is someone who has one lying in their drawer and they are no longer using it, I'm certain we can pick one up second hand but because in that 5 minute time frame we couldn't see a second hand one jumping out at us we resorted to the, 'ah well we'll go buy one' attitude.... Hello! instant gratification anyone?
Anyway, we didn't buy one, we have our feelers out and will do our darnedest to source a second hand one from somewhere!

Today I walked to the shops instead of driving to pick up the groceries. It is actually shameful that it's new because we live on the same street as the shops! I also walked out of the shops with the bare essentials of what we needed for dinner and only that. It is the first time in a long time that I didn't impulse buy something totally unnecessary, and I'm proud of that.

I still have not managed to make the laundry detergent but I'm pretty sure tomorrow will be the day for that. Something tells me I am about to have a whole lot more time on my hands now that I'm not trolling the shopping centres.

1 comment:

  1. well done! You are so right about how our brain automatically goes in to "I want it and I want it now" thinking. Good on you for resisting.
    deb

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