Its day three of my used goods project and on the whole people I have told about it have been really supportive. I have, however, had a few conversations that have made me smile internally and are definitely worth noting here.

The first was with a friend who told me about how upset she was with a particular relative because they had given her a present which was clearly second-hand, but wrapped it up as new. This was before I had the chance to tell her about my own plan. I responded by saying I thought there was nothing wrong with that if you made it clear the gift was ‘used’. Her birthday is coming up soon so I’d better clearly mark her gift with some sort of disclaimer.

Later, I was talking about my intentions to another friend who said: “That’s a really good idea. In fact, I give people second hand gifts all the time and they don’t even notice.” I wonder whether this was the said relative of the above friend. Hopefully they won’t both read this and put two and two together!

The third conversation was quite literally very brief. It was with a relative who said: “Obviously there will be things you can’t buy second hand, like food and underwear and stuff like that.” I gave a kind of “duhh” response to the food issue, but then explained that I had just bought a load of new underwear with my Christmas money. She then proceeded to be gob smacked that I could possibly think of wearing the same underwear for a year, so I rather sarcastically explained the usual protocol of washing it, and hadn’t she thought of doing that with her own? Now perhaps I am in the wrong here, but throwing away perfectly good underwear every few months seems to me to be incredibly wasteful. Am I right, or am I just disgusting? I welcome your comments!

As for my progress with the project, I have thus far managed to get through the last few days without needing to buy anything except food, although I did have a sneaky little look on ebay last night.

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