Buy. Nothing. New.

Miss E and I have signed up to participate in Buy Nothing New month. Well, I have signed up and Miss E is coming along for the ride. Miss E has no income, and lacks the fine motor skills to handle cash, a credit card or a keyboard. As a result, her personal purchasing power is quite limited. Buy Nothing New is Business as Usual for Miss E.

Buy Nothing New is a month-long challenge supported by the Salvation Army, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence and others. The idea is that, during the month of October, you only buy essentials (food, drink, medications, hygiene). The Buy Nothing New website explains that you can beg, borrow, barter, swap or buy second hand whatever you need. You just buy nothing new.

I love a time-based challenge. I especially love it when the name of the challenge is derived from the name of the month in which the challenge takes place - e.g. Movember, Ocsober. I have never neglected my personal grooming to the extent that I could participate in Movember. And, despite one or two nasty, vodka & orange related incidents in my past, I am not a big drinker and participation in Ocsober would really just be Business as Usual for both myself and Miss E.

Buy Nothing New does not have a name derived from the month of October, but it is very appealing to me.

My reasons for participating in Buy Nothing New are threefold:

1. Save money. I get a great deal of satisfaction from frugality. I love it. This challenge is fuel to my frugality fire.

2. Less stuff. Our home is very, very little. It looks better when it has less stuff in it. The less stuff I bring into this house means less stuff to tidy (or hide when people come over to make our home look tidy). It also means less stuff to eventually throw away.

3. Less landfill. I watched a report on 6:30 with George Negus and the landfill statistics were shocking. You can watch it here. I don't have sound on my computer so I can't watch it again to report on the stats so please watch the report or just take my word for it. Shocking.

So, I have pledged my participation. Of course, the minute I pledged, I thought of three things I'd like to buy: a cake tin, a cake cooling tray and a nice container for my clothes pegs marked "PEGS".

I never bake cakes but my mum had access to some very overripe bananas and she gave some to me- the black banana market at work, if you will - and they are crying out to be baked into a cake. This is hard to do without a cake tin. I did own a cake tin once. It was a groovy, silicone, roll-it-up, space-saving cake tin. Sadly, it has been rolled up and is currently saving space somewhere that is unknown to me.

 I have never owned a cake cooling tray but my anti cake baking tendencies have meant this has never been a pressing problem - until now.

The peg container is even more difficult to justify. Every day, I look at our pegs sitting outside on our window ledge in a very sad, wicker basket that doubles as a home for a delightful family of spiders, and I think to myself, "my plastic pegs deserve better". Of course, the pegs have lived quite happily in their wicker basket for many years but, no more! This situation is going to be improved.

I must be honest and inform you that, before I made the pledge, but after the commencement of October, I did make one purchase. After reading of our batsuit troubles, two very kind friends alerted me to a product of which I was previously unaware: Sleepy Wings (the pic below is from the Sleepy Wings website).

Sleepy Wings is "a versatile slumber jacket that provides parents assistance with their baby’s sleep, feed and scratching habits in the first year when a baby has little control of their own limbs". I know that a versatile slumber jacket does not sound like a necessity but, please trust me, that we need the assistance the Sleepy Wings promise to provide.

I did have a quick look on eBay to see if I could buy the Sleepy Wings second hand but I only found one auction and it wasn't ending for a week. We need the Sleepy Wings now. Through the course of my eBay search, I did find these creepy dolls which also have Sleepy and Wings in their name. I can't seem to save the pic but you can see them here.

My three key points:

1. I'm very excited to be participating in a time-based challenge. The last one I remember participating in is the 40 Hour Famine. My strongest memory of the 40 Hour Famine is eating a lot of butterscotch lollies.

2. Less stuff is good.

3. Stay tuned for tales of how we obtain what we need (or, more accurately, want) without buying anything new!