“Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath.  Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.  Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”

Even words can be recycled. Thank you, Mr Twain, for your contribution to my year of used goods, and thank you also for highlighting my infallibility so eloquently! We’re only three months into the year and already I have failed. Who am I kidding? I failed before January was even out. Marky boy was a little optimistic with his 30-day prediction.

It all started with that trip to London – you know, the one I wrote about in my last ‘Year of Used Goods’ entry. I didn’t have any smart clothes for my meeting, and my desperate search through the rails of Oxfam, ebay, friends’ wardrobes and my local dress agency yielded nothing. So I had little choice but to admit defeat and go shopping.

Can I justify my failure by saying that I paid for my brand spanking new clothes with proceeds from my own unwanted goods? Probably not completely, but I’d like to think it’s a decent compromise. I should probably not dwell on my failings, but focus on my successes in my bid for a second-hand year, for they far outweigh the failures.

For example, in the rented house where my family and I currently reside, my sons decided they didn’t like the wallpaper. I can’t say I blame them. If it was still 1970, it might have been vaguely acceptable, but because it isn’t they decided it had to go. Every night I’d put them to bed under the threat of Mr Bogeyman paying wallpaper stripping children a visit in the dead of night. But every morning there would be another piece missing. At first I tried to collect up the strips in the vain hope I could reattach them, but when they’d reached the half-way point, I helped them finish the job.

So I then had to step into my tardis and go back to 1970 in search of equally offensive wallpaper. In this case, my tardis was a particularly dated-looking charity shop, and low and behold, they were selling off a job lot of rolls that were literally screaming obscenities in my general direction. At twenty quid for eight rolls, I took the little old lady’s hand as well.

One frantic call to my wallpapering expert father later, and I was “dabbing it here and dabbing it there”, and feeling generally rather smug at my resourcefulness. It doesn’t look half bad either.

As well as the wall paper, I have also managed to pass off some second-hand birthday pressies as new: an unwanted picnic rucksack for my sister-in-law who spends a lot of time on the beach, a large vase that my children would surely break complete with original packaging for my other sister-in-law, and a spangly hair bobble I made into a brooch for my friend. I did come clean on the brooch’s origins, and my friend seemed to like it all the more.

I have also bought several items of clothing from charity shops for myself, although after my fourth bountiful visit my husband pointed out that just because I’m trying to buy second-hand it doesn’t mean it’s compulsory that I visit the charity shop every day. I have to concede that he might have had a point, when much of it ended up on ebay after realising I didn’t actually want it.

So three months into my year of used goods, and I’ve learned a thing or two about myself, and what it was that I actually set out to achieve. Basically I can’t resist a bargain, even if I don’t really need one, so from now on I will not be browsing any shop for the sake of it, not even one staffed by volunteers. My reasons for not buying new things were to reduce unnecessary clutter, to take a stand against consumer wastefulness and to limit my spending, all of which I managed to negate with my ad hoc thrift shop surfing.

Therefore, my new quarter-year resolution is to go shopping only when there’s something I really need, look second-hand first, and if it can’t find it I’ll head to the Bullring without my barbed cilice.

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