frugal challenges

We are organised.

We are clocking in at around 2 boxes a day, every few days.

Our flat is filled with bubble wrap, stray bits of paper and an infinite number of boxes.

And the harsh reality that I no longer want any of my stuff has really come to the fore recently. I've just completely gone off my stuff. Tastes have definitely changed, and yet I can't very well throw it all away.

As much as I have tried.

We need shit like a couch, canape platters and lamps. Let's be honest, life is pretty diabolical without canape platters.

The one thing that's really concerning though, is my currently extremely dull fascination with finishing all of our empty bottles.

I've turned possibly the most boring thing into somewhat of an art. I've taken to our 'products cupbaord' - the space beneath the bathroom basin that houses millions of tubes of unused sun cream, half-finished bottles of conditioner, five times too many bottles of almost-empty shower gel, in travel sizes, but never used again. And I've made this a personal challenge.

I've pulled them all out, hidden all of our premium shit away, and am forcing myself and my husband to basically finish samples we have before we move.

And you have absolutely no idea what kind of weird frugal joy this is bringing me.

I would've been a really good wartime rations person. Just ask the Brit. Sometimes I even use the teabag twice. Not for any other reason (teabags are not expensive, not even the organic, silken-kind I go for), but for the awesome tingling feeling I get from using something twice.

Just wait until I'm really 60. When my friends would've caught up being old, weirdly frugal and getting a thrill out of it.

 Anyway back to the bathroom. 

That final squeeze of that tiny travel-sized Tresemme. To reveal the last, fart-sounding globule of product. And the satisfying 'ka-thunk' of the bottle in the recycling bin, knowing I'm closer to using my Tisserand Tea Tree expensive-as-fuck nice shampoo.

It's putting on leg cream I never really liked just so I can say I finished it before our big move.

Or using that last bit of self-tan. That I just cannot bring myself to throw away.

It's the feeling of scraping out the last blob of face mask from a tube that's been going strong for years and just needs to be finished. Knowing we have less bottles to take with us to our new house.

Yup.

It's a problem. And I'm not quite sure how this came to be.