Most shops are just landfill waiting to happen.

I wonder where people get the idea that they need all this stuff?

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I think it's our approach to 'things' that's all wrong to be honest.

So many people want shiny & new all the time. It's a v particular aesthetic.

We have lots of stuff in our house but I'm v mindful of not replacing for the sake of it & in fact I became v sentimental about some things.

We bought a ruin & against the prevailing advice at the time that it it would be cheaper & we'd have a bigger house if we knocked it entirely & plonked a new build on the site. We were not interested in doing that.

We slowly restored the house using the more expensive traditional materials - lime render, proper slate, limestone sills etc . Our house is definitely smaller than many of our friends & colleagues who built new. But we love it & the fact that we've saved it from destruction or decaying totally.

Our furniture is a mix of bespoke to fit the dimensions of the house, antiques from grandparents houses on both side & some antiques we've bought + some new furniture.

We have only ever bought big furniture like sofas etc once since we moved in 20 years ago but we have reupholstered etc

We are still using v good pots & pans (Meyer & wedgewood) that we bought when we moved in & some were wedding presents! 99% of our utensils - ladles/ peeler / whisk etc also date from moving in..our dc is 20 now & somedays when I pick up a whisk or spatula I get a flash back to her little hand holding it as a child helping in the kitchen

When she was small we built up a collection of Halloween & Easter & Christmas decorations. And we still have them now. The Halloween & Easter were mainly from poundshops etc but we've minded them & stored them & they're still in perfect nick

We've continued to add to the Christmas decorations but only ever adding to what we have & never throwing anything out unless broken beyond repair. I have some of my grandmother's decorations & they are precious. I have some that dd made in preschool. We have an expensive fake tree that we've had 20 years. I can't bear to think of chopping down a tree every year. We will have this one probably for the rest of our lives

Dh has a relative & honestly she baffles me. She decorated her house top to bottom about every 2 years & i mean new everything- sofas, curtains etc & whatever colour scheme she has that year she matches her Christmas tree & baubles. Which seems to mean she buys all new decorations about every 2 years!! She follows all the trends- crushed silver velvet was a big one. She's in a grey & mustard phase at the moment & in the past few years there's been an icy turquoise and a hot pink phase..

I admit I do judge her wastefulness..and I'm morbidly fascinated by how she buys things only because they 'match' a colour scheme. So all her ornaments etc change too. Nothing seems to have any meaning or value. Its very next catalogue or ez living showroom feeling.

And sadly I don't think she's alone. I'd say she can't understand us holding into things so long.

I also don't think there is anything "wrong" with places like Home Bargains. I use the one near me for toothpaste, dishwasher tablets, hair serum, antihistamine tablets, some groceries. Basically the front half of the shop. The back half of the shop is the tat-fest section, at the moment it's full of cheap plastic garden ornaments and father's day shite along with easter shite, then it will eventually be filled with Halloween shite and Christmas shite. Stuff that people MUST buy, or they wouldn't sell it.

I caused a bit of shock with one (adult) DC when they found out that I was using (a) bath gel in the shower, both to wash myself and my hair, and (b) general-purpose surface cleaner on the bath instead of "bath cleaner". Most of these products are chemically extremely similar.

Ah. Thanks for that.

There is just so much stuff everywhere

Hundred of toiletries, make up products, cleaning products. health supplements, clothes & then food, so much choice in supermarkets & constant newness.

Scientist here: The "hardness" of the metal has nothing to do with whether it leaches into the water being boiled in it. How much of the pan ends up dissolving in the water is a function of the reactivity of the metal. Gold is a soft metal and you could boil water for a year without a single atom reacting with anything in the pan, because gold hardly reacts with anything, and certainly not any substances that you would find in an average kitchen.

Aluminium is slightly more likely than stainless steel to react with acidic components in food to form aluminium ions, which some people believe are related to dementia and/or Alzheimer's. However, there is no very good evidence for this at present, and there are plenty of other candidates to explain those conditions. For example, I recently saw a suggestion that the chickenpox virus can reactivate in later life, causing dementia instead of shingles.

Oh lawdy I thought I was the only one who hated this tacky, wasteful stuff - thank you all for making me feel less of a miserable, humourless cow!

There is no reason we should use the Earth’s limited resources in pursuit of some pointless “celebration” when we probably neither understand nor believe the meaning behind it.

But that's fine. Your jeans are worn to the stage they can't be repaired. Your jumpers have been worn to death and need replaced. That is mindful consumption.

What would be mindless or ridiculous would be chucking out a pair of jeans you've had for a month because someone told you bootcut was in not skinny jeans, or because you'd gone off the colour of your jumper.

ChatGPT is terrible for the environment too

Didn’t have showers! Bars of soap. Shampoo came in glass bottles

They didn't use many liquids. Bars of soap, soap flakes, beeswax, borax etc and if it had to be liquid then you'd get it in glass bottles like vinegar. I worked as a cleaner for a while when I was younger and you honestly only need 1 or 2 products to clean your entire home.

Shower gel was not a thing when I was a kid in the 80s. You'd just have bar soap.

This is why I mostly get my clothes from eBay now, after seeing the mountains of fast fashion clothes dumped in third world countries. Bottled water also makes me cross, our tap water is perfectly safe to drink. Why buy it in non reusable plastic bottles? Problems for future generations to sort out.

Plastic plastic plastic plastic -we are going to drown in it.

Why don’t Govs force shops and supermarkets to find alternative containers for things -I can’t be the only one in the country who would accept some inconvenience if stuff was in cardboard, waxed or otherwise.
Then the cost of ‘recycling’ -yea right- who is paying for it?

Some interesting-looking books on this topic:

• Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte:
• Garbage Land is a nonfiction book that follows trash from the bottom of a trash can, exploring the people and processes involved in waste management, from odor chemists to recycling gurus. It highlights the environmental and social impact of our consumption habits.
• Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp:
• Waste Wars examines the global politics of trash and how waste from affluent countries is often exported to poorer nations, creating environmental and social injustices.
• Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis:
• Wasteland provides a journey into the waste industry, exploring the secret world of trash management, from waste pickers in India to the after-life of our technology in Ghana.

Re: flying tiger, I do quite like that shop. Amongst the tat, you can get decent stuff.
I got a few of the £2 glass tumblers. They have lovely designs on them and they are better quality than the IKEA ones which all broke eventually. The Tiger ones have lasted so far.

That's the way capitalism/COL etc is making life and everyone is complaining about it. Would you also think it's a bad idea to price your average person out of everything but the essential and let wealthier people keep the economy somewhat active or does it have to be EVERYONE? Because alot of people complain about not having enough money on their wage or money that they receive because other people have more when it would be good for the environment in a strange way if they were just completely priced out.

I'm grateful for the Netflix documentary suggestions. Will watch them.

I don't do fast fashion - have never bought from Temu or Shein - but my everyday "uniform" gets so much wear that I do have to chuck it eventually. I wear the same two pairs of Marks jeans and Boden V-neck jumpers every day. Eventually, the jeans look so worn that I'm sure no charity shop would take them. I have rubbed holes in them before where the thighs meet - but I have sewn them up. The dye gets very faded. The jumpers last longer - maybe 3 to 4 years of being worn every other day.

Oh I totally agree!

I only meant I also have "eclectic" taste and scour second hand/vintage places for anything I need to get a unique-ish piece. The rest of that post I disagreed with completely, iirc.

I think survival of ancient artifacts only occurs in certain conditions really. It's just as well that archaeologists have such good imaginations.
There is some talk about mining landfills when there's profit to be had https://elfm-network.co.uk/ .

A PP asked about what to buy for children's birthdays... This year, one of my DCs has stated they don't want a party, and I am relieved. Every year they have a party, they come home with nearly 30 boxes of plastic toys. Whilst we're utterly grateful for people buying a gift, it does quickly turn into clutter. Our playroom is ridiculous and I am constantly having to weed bits out to take to the charity shop.

It made us really consider what presents we buy for DCs' friends, usually vouchers for local experiences, or books.

In terms of seasonal tat, we do buy seasonal goods - things that last. We have a celebration ring which we use to decorate either a table, or a windowsill in the house with the seasonal changes. It's wooden and will last for years and we've repaired one of the wooden pieces. We haven't bought new Christmas decorations in years, although definitely know people who change their themes every year.

I grew up in a DA household, which had frequent breakdowns. Quite often, all of my possessions would be binned, and my DM would have to rebuy everything again. I do have a slight hoarder tendency, and now I'm trying desperately to declutter, the thing that's holding me back is house to declutter responsibly.

Thank you, I went to a design museum.last year and remember seeing toothpaste in a tin but was racking my brain trying to think how shampoo or shower gel was packaged. I guess people used soap or bath salts instead of liquid

A Bosch washing machine should definitely last more than 5 years. How come they couldn't fix it?