Three 'beauty' advent calendars for a grown woman?

[royco]

I've just seen someone posting that she's got three beauty advent calendars to open this year.

When did this become a thing? Surely it's wasteful, expensive and completely unnecessary?

Call me Scrooge

Excellent post @DrSbaitso. Bravo.

My DH buys me one every year
I don't post it on SM or anything but I love getting it and so enjoy it

colourfulpuddles

“You’d hate Christmas at our house, OP. We go all out, and I mean all out 😅 Piles of presents, way too much food, every inch of the house and garden decorated.

Gosh. Imagine being so miserable you sit there complaining that other people are enjoying life.

Instead of getting yourself all worked up over what other people are doing, make changes in your own life to make yourself happy. Because if you were happy, you wouldn’t give a crap what anyone else is doing.”

This! Can’t wait to see what’s in day 3 of my Liberty calendar

I have 2 and DD has 2 and not on purpose.

I have a vegan toiletries one. I am pregnant and whereas usually I might not use everything I am actually going to need all the lotions to lotion up! A bit of self care and anything I dont use (I looked at the sneak peak so can't actually see any in the list I wouldnt) I would donate to the local refuge where I often donate toiletries. The advent calendar itself can be reused. My friend bought me another as a gift. Totally different type and I will also use it all. Very minimal packaging.

DD has a chocolate one I bought. We reuse the plastic insert as a mould for xmas chocolates and same will happen with this one. I didnt realise her grandparent had bought her a wooden reusable one and couldn't return her other. The wooden reusable one will be used from now on. Its a great idea.

I had two one year, wash great

Absolutely agree with @AprilLady
I am very mindful of waste and consumerism in general but I get great joy out of beauty products and my December advent treats give great cheer. I don't give two hoots if anyone wants to judge me.

The calendar packaging is generally reusable. I use mine to store Christmas decorations.

I actually don’t care that much about the planet now. Covid has meant no one cares: full on one use plastics etc. And the hypocrisy of COP26 has shown me it’s pointless. So I’m going to enjoy myself in the tiny ways I can

When did this become a thing? Surely it's wasteful, expensive and completely unnecessary?

• Advent calendars have been a thing for decades
• It’s not wasteful if she’s going to use the products. And even if it was, it’s sod all to do with you.
• Nobody is asking you to pay for it. Nor are you being asked to listen to anyone complain they are broke because they’ve bought expensive advent calendars. Until they do, it’s sod all to do with you.
• Who died and appointed you Chief Arbitrator of everything necessary and unnecessary? Do you have nothing in your home that brings you pleasure but isn’t necessary? No art? No books? No music? No nice furniture? Why do you believe that it’s acceptable for you to have those things, but it’s ok for you to negatively judge the owner of the advent calendars because you don’t understand the pleasure that beauty products bring her?

@Sn0tnose

When did this become a thing? Surely it's wasteful, expensive and completely unnecessary?

• Advent calendars have been a thing for decades
• It’s not wasteful if she’s going to use the products. And even if it was, it’s sod all to do with you.
• Nobody is asking you to pay for it. Nor are you being asked to listen to anyone complain they are broke because they’ve bought expensive advent calendars. Until they do, it’s sod all to do with you.
• Who died and appointed you Chief Arbitrator of everything necessary and unnecessary? Do you have nothing in your home that brings you pleasure but isn’t necessary? No art? No books? No music? No nice furniture? Why do you believe that it’s acceptable for you to have those things, but it’s ok for you to negatively judge the owner of the advent calendars because you don’t understand the pleasure that beauty products bring her?

lol at your very snippy post.

She's right, it is absolutely wasteful, unnecessary and, I would say, somewhat grotesque given what we all know which is that we must reduce consumerism in order to survive.

The blatant disrespect for the planet, endangered populations and ecosystems is the gigantic toxic weed in our lives, a plague of ignorance.

Lol at your audacity to call Sn0tnose’s post ‘snippy’ @50ShadesOfCatholic. I presume you live an entirely monastic existence, entirely free from frivolity and decadence, and with every decision and purchase you make in total deference to the planet as a whole? Because how dare someone have something nice at Christmas, how utterly immoral.

@50ShadesOfCatholic Yeah, it was a bit too snarky. A combination of being up too late and peri menopausal grumpiness I suspect.

I think it’s just the sanctimonious hypocrisy that is rankling with me. I know it’s just because of the time of year but there are so many posters jumping on people at the moment because they’ve bought new plastic baubles or something frivolous and unnecessary that has been deemed ‘tat’. Ffs, does anyone remember the woman who got moaned at last year for having a ‘plastic tat mentality’ because she made her DC pancakes in the shape of a Christmas tree?! And yes, we all know we need to reduce consumption. But bearing in mind the profile of the average Mumsnetter, it stands to reason that some of these posters are going to be sat in their nicely heated big three bedroom houses, with a car or two outside, children upstairs and a booking confirmation for their post Covid skiing trip to Val D’Iser (I know that’s going to be spelled wrong) sitting in their in-box, feeling all smug because they’ve bought their meat from an artisan butcher who wraps it in brown paper that they’re going to re-use to wrap their DC’s ‘something they want, something they need’… wooden presents in.

You never see any of these posters saying that they’ve gone vegan or vegetarian because of their concern for the environment. Or that they’ve sold their cars and downsized to a smaller house in a busier location so their same sex DC can share a bedroom, reduce the heating they use and everyone can either walk, cycle or get the bus to school and work instead of using the car. Nobody has mentioned cancelling their holiday or reducing their DC’s after school activities in order to take them litter picking in the park. And that’s fine. I don’t expect them to and being aware of what they buy and how much packaging it has is an absolutely great thing. I just think some posters could do with being reminded that they could get their own houses in order before lecturing other people about having more than the bare essentials. And, obviously, if you’re already channeling your inner Greta, then I’m not including you in this.

Pretty sure I may have just doubled down on the snarkiness!

To be fair, the tone was a little snippy!

AIBU is honestly such great entertainment - so much passion. If only our politicians were this passionate about things….. (sigh)

To be fair, the tone was a little snippy! I re wrote that post twice so I didn’t get banned, I think snippy is a big improvement! 🙂

@Ileflottante

Lol at your audacity to call Sn0tnose’s post ‘snippy’ *@50ShadesOfCatholic*. I presume you live an entirely monastic existence, entirely free from frivolity and decadence, and with every decision and purchase you make in total deference to the planet as a whole? Because how dare someone have something nice at Christmas, how utterly immoral.

It was very snippy. Mine is just eloquent truth telling. I'm sorry it makes you feel defensive, I'm guessing you're a consumerism glorifier 😂 Very 80s

@CSJobseeker

It's a whole culture that has to change and these calendars are one small part of it, but to me they seem to be a sign that we are still going in the wrong direction.

Yep, that's the sum of it. This is a symptom, not the underlying issue, but it shows we are definitely not moving in the right direction.

This is how I feel too. It's like if we're on a ship (in harbour) that's sinking because it's got too much weight on it, and we need to throw some near-essential bits of equipment overboard to survive and people are trying to avoid accepting the inevitable and doing that and frantically arguing about it. And meanwhile, someone else is gathering up pebbles from the dock and putting them on the boat. And on the one hand the pebbles are pretty meaningless compared to the heavy machinery we need to ditch but on the other hand it feels reasonable to be annoyed at the person with the pebbles - FFS! We need less weight, why are you introducing more at this stage?!

That's how I feel about introducing new forms of consumerism like these advent calendars - is it a big deal, really, compared to air travel or factories belching out smoke and other climate change 'big hitters'? No. But it just seems so profoundly unhelpful to introduce new 'must haves' at this stage when we so desperately need to reduce consumption.

@50ShadesOfCatholic, if you really want to encourage people to change their behaviours, read @DrSbaitso’s excellent post from 14:45 yesterday. Blaming it all on a “plague of ignorance” is naive and condescending and lacks any real understanding of either human behaviour or the ways in which change can be effected.

You never see any of these posters saying that they’ve gone vegan or vegetarian because of their concern for the environment....

You're making the mistake of assuming that everyone announces everything they do. Why on earth would you assume that?

I gave up meat for environmental reasons a few years ago. I've also planned every house move I've ever made so as to avoid being reliant on a car to commute (I live rurally, so I cycle into the nearest town to reach a station). There are plenty of other things I do too, I've just never felt the need to make a big announcement on MN or social media about those things.

@Twelveshoes

The calendar packaging is generally reusable. I use mine to store Christmas decorations.

This will be true for one or two years, but I doubt anyone will still be finding uses for it when they have collected 5 or 10 of the things. They are meant to be an annual purchase (that's what the companies want, anyway).

@WouldBeGood

I actually don’t care that much about the planet now. Covid has meant no one cares: full on one use plastics etc. And the hypocrisy of COP26 has shown me it’s pointless. So I’m going to enjoy myself in the tiny ways I can

This is true. How many millions of disposable face masks are in the oceans? How much waste are the LFT’s generating? How many of the COP26 attendees arrived via private jet? We’re being mocked.

This will be true for one or two years, but I doubt anyone will still be finding uses for it when they have collected 5 or 10 of the things. They are meant to be an annual purchase (that's what the companies want, anyway)

We’re a family of 5. Up until a year ago we generated 4 boxes of recycling a week. This was, in the main, the plastic punnets that fruit, veg and meat are packed in.
About a year ago I started shopping for meat and veg at the butchers and the green grocers. I am lucky that we can afford this, it’s more expensive than the supermarket. We now generate one box of recycling a week.
Throwing away the packaging of an advent calendar every 2 years would be an absolute drop in the ocean compared to the plastic waste generated by standard food packaging.

Throwing away the packaging of an advent calendar every 2 years would be an absolute drop in the ocean compared to the plastic waste generated by standard food packaging.

I 100% agree - which is why I think we should tackle both, and why there are loads of campaign groups trying to get supermarkets etc. to reduce plastic packaging.

Personally I buy everything that I possibly can loose and use a local veg delivery, but that isn't an option for everyone so supermarket packaging definitely needs tackling. There is good practice out there, but I think it will take legislation and fines/financial incentives to make businesses take action.

The problem is that if we continue saying that [small thing] doesn't matter because look at that [big thing] over there, we won't ever solve any of it.

I don't have kids, but I'd like my nieces and nephews to inherit a world that isn't suffering the kind of catastrophic effects we're heading towards.

@CSJobseeker You’re absolutely right, which is why I included that last sentence in my third paragraph. I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. You’ve very clearly put your money where your mouth is and I have nothing but respect for you for doing it. I’m talking very specifically about those who don’t do what you’ve done and I very firmly believe that they are the majority and you are the minority.

Tbh, the change required (I.e. a fundamental rethink of consumerism itself) is not really compatible with a capitalist society. I really worry for what the future might bring when some of this starts to hit home.