NOT BUYING IT! 2015 - A consumer holiday

greenbee

katkin wrote: »

YORKSHIRELASS I think its doable going for the natural look and using up whatever toiletries and cosmetic you may have in stock - but being frugal / using less for more iykwim. I bet most of us have plenty hidden away :cool: Though I appreciate cosmetic have a shelf life. My hubby thinks I look great without the full "slap" on that I used to wear to work

Funny how most of us find that the people we know and who know us actually prefer the natural look. I wear very little when not at work, but sadly work requires rather unnatural makeup due to the lighting/video element. The men obviously don't bother, so get a bit of a shock on the occasions that it is inflicted on them! I do, however, try to minimise what I use and buy natural/organic where possible.

katkin wrote: »

Thank you for this post greenbee, I will research those links and appreciate your advice x

Aye, in my normal job I'm a "suit" and have to look profssional and groomed - but I'm changing and those other "power" women I'm workng with are growing grey and going for less of the lippy look quite elegantly I feel the tide is turning for us professional gals Why the hell should we looked like made up dolls when its all about our skills, experience and knowledge - what we look like is means nothing. !!!!!! !!!!!! the men. It just takes "balls" and attitude to for it :cool:

I'm still paying for hairdressing cuts and colours as I'm moving towards blending my grey (natural silver highlights ) in. My hairdresser told me it would take 2 more goes throughout 2015 before it went semi-natural / silver, and yep I'll probably go for that even if it means finding the cash by ebay sales or some other means.

A number of my older colleagues are going through this - trying to find the right time to stop colouring. As you say, it has to be done gradually. I'll need to wait quite a long time as at the moment it would just look odd. However, I do organise my hair appointments around client-facing work, so last-minute bookings aren't popular! (It also means that if I'm travelling, the colour can come off on hotel towels rather than mine!)

katkin wrote: »

You're right about the clothes probably, this will be trouble unless I can be canny and creative and scour the charity shops :A Thank goodness I have my sewing machine.

If you're good with a sewing machine, that's great. I'm not! If you have decent suits it's well worth finding someone who can alter them professionally as you shrink (useful anyway, they're never made the right shape!). Mine have been down one size already and I've been told they can be taken in again (the lady who does them effectively remakes them rather than just taking in a few places). And when I've finished losing weight I'll have to buy some more (but they are all about 5-10 years' old!).

GreyQueen wrote: »

Morning all.

katkin, put these words into a search engine; 'talc' and 'cancer' and read what you'll find. I'd be very surprised if you'd want to use it afterwards.

A lot of beauty products and cosmetics have a very ugly history. Pre-internet, I did some research on the cosmetics industry for my dissertation. There are death certificates around attributing liver cancer deaths in women to prolonged use of hairdyes. It takes all of 17 seconds for dye applied to your head to soak through your whole body and even be detectable in your urine.

I'm fast turning into a snowy-top and will stick with it, with darkish brows and lashes and green eyes, I think I'll rock the silver fox look. And it's so deliciously low-maintenance, too.

I have a great book called 'Toxic Beauty'. Saves me a fortune as by the time I've read the ingredients on cosmetics or toiletries I've gone off them!

For those who need to have their hair dyed, the suggestion is to take fibre, charcoal and if possible bentonite clay before and after to help eliminate the toxins. No idea whether it works. I don't do the clay, but I do the rest!

VJsmum

I was born and raised in Kent - can i join too. And if you think Medway is bad.... There's only one place worse. mind, i went off it at the weekend when i was forced to get a bus from Rainham to Strood.

Anyway i digress...

I am really loving this thread - i think i may have commented early on.

Increasingly over the years, I have hated the whole "christmas shopping" thing - just too much stuff. It isn't the money, it's the stuff.

Last weekend i went out with my friend and was putting together a "pamper haamper" for the nieces. so i was thinking about mini shower gel from the Body Shop, nice, fruity, ethical (ish) and friend said "my girls wouldn't thank you for anything from the BS". it really brought me up short - I don't quite know how i didn't say "they need a bliddy good hiding then". How shallow, selfish, words fail me :mad: To be fair they are nice girls and probably would thank me, but the attitude of friend.....

Actually I love doing those hampers - 4 for nieces and one foody based one for dad. all useful stuff (still stuff though), and a treat. No -one seems to have got the hint that i would love something like that.

I am trying to use the local farm shops more - i always use my butcher, and I am not supermarket loyal. Could i give them up for Jan? I don't know, but i could certainly cut down more - that's a start right?

Mrs Lw - I love your common sense posts

Primrose

I think many of us tend to spend January trying to live off Christmas leftovers . We are also trying to run down a large garage freezer so we can defrost it but a disproportionate portion of the contents seem to be home grown soft fruit. As we rarely eat desserts, it's proving a little difficult and in future I need to restock it with things that we eat more regularly and which can be batch cooked to save fuel.

thriftwizard

I'm another one not ashamed of my silver hairs or a few lines; mind you, my hair's that shade of slightly reddish dark brown that fades very slowly; my mother has finally achieved the salt & pepper look now at 88, without ever using dye. I can understand not wanting to go grey at 26, when several of my friends started to lose hair colour, but at 55 it's just part of embracing a more experienced & serene me!

I only use make-up when dancing (which is my equivalent of the gym, only miles cheaper & a lot more fun) as everyone looks ghastly under spotlights without it. I've gone barefaced for years, because my skin comes out in a rash if I use warpaint daily. But I used to get pulled up for it at work - I never could understand why a systems analyst would need makeup & high-heels? Which I also refused to wear. No-one pulled the men up for looking like a bunch of nerds, after all, and that's exactly what we (all) were!

And yes, people routinely mistake me for being rather younger than I actually am, which I attribute to not plastering over the cracks as well as some lucky genes. Water, a bit of pure soap when needed, and a dab of cream which isn't even officially a moisturiser but seems to work, and my personal toiletries budget comes in at about £20 a year. But I have a friend who is a working actor, a very glamorous one, and without makeup she looks about 70 until she laughs; she puts it down to the constant putting on/scraping off of heavy makeup, and the drying effect of the lights. She's still drop-dead gorgeous, though, and a hundred times more beautiful than I ever was or will be!

So be warned - paying lots of money to achieve that fresh complexion may actually cost you your skin tone in the end, as well as loads of money. And indeed, there are well-documented health risks associated with quite a lot of ingredients; two of the best beauty aids in the past were arsenic, for clear translucent skin, and belladonna, aka deadly nightshade, for wide shiny eyes...

purpleshoes_2

Well, I'm going to keep getting highlights done, I'm pretty low maintenance, am dark blonde by nature and the plan is/was to get most of my hair back to its natural colour with just a couple of highlights on top and this was achieved except I had to go elsewhere in the summer and its now blonder again, but once its done in January, the plan will be to get it done in may then I'll leave it till October. Its not that I don't like my natural hair colour, I do, I spent most of my 20s and into my mid 30s with it, I just prefer the color when its been lifted a shade or two.

I don't get my hair cut in between colours so this year I've spent 20 quid so far as one of the colors I got in the summer ended up being free.. If I had darker hair I'd probably put a funky bit of purple through it but I don't

Its not going to be easy for me to do the one month without supermarkets but what I will do is attempt to eat everything in my freezer before buying anything else and attempt to only buy yellow stickered if I have to top up. I bought tons of ys food this year. I don't eat tatties due to the eating programme I'm on or that could have been a plan.

What I am going to do is get all my zumbawear washed up, I gave up my license last year, hardly wore any of it when I was teaching, shove it on eBay or free cycle, its got to go. I've moved away from teaching classes that involve paying a license to ones that don't, its around 250 a year to keep your licence current or you have to repeat training every year. I've also stopped paying metafit as well, I now teach my own hiit classes and the only license I pay now is 30 quid a year to boxercise.

For anyone who likes wine and is fed up paying supermarket prices I used to buy kits from a company called the art of brewing. After the initial start up kit it worked out at a quid a bottle. They also do beer, cider and spirit kits as well.

I rarely drink wine these days but for anyone not brave enough to make wine from scratch, I wasn't, its an idea.

The declutter goes on. Last night I was going through some stuff and I found a lamp complete with bulb and it worked, how happy can finding a working lamp make one person.

I am trying to avoid the pandemonium that are the supermarkets just now anyway and when I do top up it will be for the cats, not me, they should have enough food/litter to keep them going until the weekend.

I'm going to make more parsnip soup today and try not to think about cake. I'm 57 pounds down since last summer but my bootcamp instructor thinks I can get another 23 pounds off by the end of this year which will mean lots more burpees and not a lot of cake.

PS my tablet americanises spellings so color may be color, just in case I look like I've lost the plot.

Slowdown

YORKSHIRELASS wrote: »

Oh wow I need to be part of this. I really struggle with the need to have stuff. I have this deeply ingrained idea that having stuff will make me more attractive, more likeable and improve my life. Yes I know thats stupid but I have battled against it for years - and now I am in debt with the possibility of financial meltdown looming.

Ahoy there, welcome to the good ship NoBuy!

I would just like to say that this in no way stupid! Most of us are signing up for this as we have the same feelings. The advertisers know exactly what they are doing and pay out millions to con us into thinking we will be more likeable, more successful, happier in every way if we just indulge in their products. It is not stupid of you, but they treat all of us like we are stupid and we are not! In fact, as Captain of this merry little craft Iwould like to ban the use of the word 'stupid' if applied to ourselves. But please use freely with regard to companies which treat us as if we are.

So now is the time to get wise.

Supermarkets are tricky numbers and have so many ploys to get us to spend that you have to really be on your toes. I am not a loyal customer to any and hop around according to the vouchers I have. I am wise to their cut price items too. They often raise the price of an item a couple of weeks before then reducie it to the price it was previously. I noticed a bottle of white wine in my local store that was £5.99. It then jumped to £8.99 and a couple of weeks later wore a yellow label saying it was a price drop to £6!! Hhmmm!

I buy meat in the village butchers and will resume my Abel and Cole delivery in January.

Let's not get ourselves into beating up mode for the mistakes we make but congratulate ourselves on getting wise and fighting back. All it takes is awareness and effort.

Be aware that not for one moment do the supermarkets care about you. No matter what they say, what pictures they churn out, what messages they peddle, they are not there for us! They are there for themselves.

There are of course places that are higher up the moral ladder than others but they do tend to be more expensive. The Coop and Waitrose are owned by the people who work in them. The workers have shares nd the companies look after them better than most. Waitrose tend to treat their suppliers more fairly as far as I have read and the Coop has always been known as a more ethical investor. In fact when I was a student in the eighties, most of us banked with them because of this and their anti-apartheid stance. I worked for them many years back and considered them to fair and competent employers.

I will use these shops in conjunction with the local ones next year and with a bit of careful planning and the fact I'm down to one child at home the bills shouldn't be more.

Well I have my telescope trained on the horizon and can already see the pirates laying in wait. But I'm also ready with the cannons and a massive crew of hugely competent sailors.
Bring 'em on!!

Kind regards
Slowdown:)

[Deleted User]

Not caring one jot what the outside looks like as long as it's relatively clean and tidy I think the best time to go 'grey' is when nature does it on its own and NOT even consider dyeing your hair in the first place. I always think that ladies of a certain age with youthfully coloured hair look just wrong as their skin tone is that of an older person and too much make up in an attempt to retain youth looks wrong too. That's just me though and if colouring hair and make up make you happy then why not?

purpleshoes_2

No co op in my area sadly, it shut a few years ago as it couldn't compete with asda. There's no waitrose near me either, I'm around 20 miles from Glasgow and the nearest waitrose is a long way away. I'm just going to try and see what other basics for me I can pick up at the fruit stall.

Sweet potato curry will be on the menu a lot I probably shop in local stores more than I think I do, but they aren't food shops mostly. Even the corner shops around here tend to be nisas and I just can't afford the prices.

VJsmum

http://www.plantbased-pixie.com/mango-coconut-vegetable-curry/

This is a lovely recipe - sweet potato would work excellently in it. She also has a sweet potato, kale chilli i should like to try.

What are Able and cole like? is it worth it?

purpleshoes_2

Kale is great. I usually just fry it in coconut oil and add a bit of tomato/jalapeños.

I was reading the other day that butternut squash has much the same nutrients as sweet tattie but less cals. I don't really count cals, but its useful to know.