Most shops are just landfill waiting to happen.

[SummerDaytoNight]

I mean, all are to a point, but I’m talking about the non essential ones.

Our society is engineering its own collapse. We only need food, health, house basics and clothing. And I suppose, technology.

Fast fashion could go. Housing should just be the essentials.

My friend took me into a shop called sostrene grene. It was lovely, but nothing was essential. Most shops are like that.

The horse has bolted, but I wish we could limit the unnecessarily stuff and just have the basics. Im not talking Amish level, but there’s no need for all this waste. It would be so much better if only the essentials were produced.

At the point of production, it’s already basically landfill.

@GloriaHeart

in the 1970's series The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin- Reggie (Leonard Rossiter) opens up a shop selling all kinds of shite called "Grot" but to his dismay it proves wildly successful!

Agree with this. Page after page of virtue signalling, all coming from a place of having the privilege to afford choices.
How MN posters love looking down their noses at those who shop in B&M and HB, and if it can be incorporated with performance environmental concern, so much better.
'Plastic tat', 'seasonal tat' over and over again.
Such rampant snobbery.

I do think it's cheaper to buy good quality items as they last so much longer

Agree. Especially regarding the seasonal stuff. I often go to our local TK Maxx for nice hand soap. Their 'homeware' section always has literally tons of seasonal shite in it. Who the fuck wants a Halloween Doormat? Are people switching mats with the seasons? Or an Easter Egg Mirror? At the moment they have a full pink and white china plates/mugs/bowls/jug set covered in easter bunnies. FOR WHAT? FOR WHEN? Easter Sunday?

And the reduced for quick sale is loads of unsold Valentine shite. Dog bows with love hearts/toothbrush holders with 'Be Mine' stamped on them, Happy Valentine's Day duvet set. What? WHAT?

Utterly soul destroying.

Yeah, but you know WHY there's so much stuff everywhere? It's because people keep having multiple babies! There's a lot of stuff but there are a lot of people to buy that stuff, which is why there's so much stuff....and so on.

Everyone wants to save the planet but no one wants to give up having cars, children, or holidays!

I absolutely agree.

But this is only feasible (as mentioned earlier in the thread) if you have the capital to buy the good, quality items in the first place.

Sadly I know two people who do. Neither of them in my circle of friends. One was an ex-colleague who I knew I didn't like years before she (very defensively) told me she spends about £200 every year on entirely new decorations. She's not rich.

I said I thought that was a waste of money - she disagreed.

Telling people to spend less money is virtue-signalling? OK then. Or to keep their clothes until they are falling apart rather than replacing every 5 minutes?

Changing your decor every year or filling your home with plastic tat bought for every "celebration" is EXPENSIVE! It is a CHOICE to buy all this nonsense. You cannot simultaneously complain about cost of living and buy those plastic dancing santa ornaments and seasonal bedding.

Is it? I didn't know that - not that I've ever used it. Isn't it just a web thing? How's it bad for the environment?

I bought myself some plastic plants back in 2019, when I left my husband. I got them to cheer up the very bare flat I’d moves into and I still have them.

I later had them scattered around a house I was selling (and added some larger fake plants I borrowed from my office) and they functioned well in breaking up areas that looked a bit empty. Obviously they weren’t the only thing that sold the house, but it definitely looked better with them than without.

I could have had (and indeed did have) some real plants, but I moved country and they had to stay behind, while I still have the plastic ones. I’m fairly rubbish with real plants, so plastic plants serve me well. I’m not sure why you would single those out as particularly bad.

I don't.
But I don't look down my nose at people who do, unlike most pps on this thread.

We certainly didn't have much spare cash - that's why we cared for & reused our stuff- including the poundshop decorations.

And I'm sorry, I simply don't believe that the majority of people buying seasonal stuff & redecorating annually are doing so because it all needs to be replaced!

they're doing it because it's a trend they see on SM & because they don't think critically about it & for a host of other reasons - not because they're so poor they buy in b&m and that means it disintegrated (because that's simply not true)

Stop making excuses for all the people who want the latest mirrored side tables & crushed velvet furniture to replace last seasons black leatherette because it's 'trendy' to them.

Charity shops depress me so much. I like to buy what I can second hand but every charity shop has shelf after shelf of utter shite that nobody wants. An ornamental kitten holding a love heart saying ‘nan’. A massive canvas of some random skyline all faded at the edges. A ‘live, laugh, love ‘ cushion in some god awful fabric. You get the idea.
I don’t have a problem with seasonal stuff if reused. My Christmas decorations are put away and reused. Every year I add a few new bits but considering I also use my grandmas ornaments from the 70’s I don’t think that’s so bad.

That's definitely a bit much! I decorate for Christmas, and I do have a small number of Halloween tings like a clay pumpkin lantern that you put a candle in, but I wouldn't decorate for Easter or V Day too!

I agree with you @SummerDaytoNight

The seasonal stuff should go - things should be more expensive. I was in one of these shops last week and they had kids playsets that were 99p. I couldn’t believe how it could be only 99p!! It had come from china. Surely even the shipping would cost more per item let alone the manufacture. All plastic tat.
I think there is a place for fashion but agree it should all be more expensive and made to last. The lifetime of white goods also infuriates me- it’s getting less and less!

Oh sorry! Yes I agree with that bit too!

I buy soap from tk maxx too.

I like the shop's concept of selling off good stuff cheap(ish). Got my good quality frying pan for 60% off because it was no longer a fashionable colour. I think it might be back in vogue again (sage green), or maybe back in and then back out again... its a pan, lives in a cupboard, who cares...

It’s really bad. The electricity it uses. BBC had a very good article on their news site about it yesterday.

Didn’t clothes shops in the past change their lines once every 16 weeks and now it’s every 4 or something like that.

We’ll be getting lots more Chinese made tat now thanks to Trump’s tariffs

Yep! I was thinking the same when I was shopping recently, thinking this is all just tat hat will get binned.

I wish we could go back to the times where items were mostly manufactured in their country of origin and lasted.

We are using cutlery that my parents bought in the 1960s, toys from the 1970's and 80's. The Fisher Price toys that are still as solid as the day they were bought new.

I still use the can opener, saucepans and plates I bought 30 years ago for my first year of uni.

I only ever recall my parents having the same fridge freezer up until about 10 years ago. An Electrolux one. It lasted for at least 25 years.

Whataboutery.

I think you may (deliberately?) be missing the point here.

@samarrange 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.

Solid gold cookware it is, then! I would love that!!! 🤣

The point is, people don't need to buy all the things at all, not that they should buy the shit at a higher price! Nice to know you're all "down with the peasants" though, while I'm a snob for not buying things 🙄

I agree, but unfortunately it seems we need to have growth and for that, we need to be encouraged to spend, spend, spend. I don't understand why growth is so desirable but I'm not an economics expert. Personally, I think some things are more important than having money and making profits.