Green and Thrifty

So this has been a very uneventful green and thrifty week. I have gone out of my way to do er, nothing new on the green and thrifty front. I have been very busy being very sad and eating lots of comforting buttered toast. I have been doing all the same old, same old. Composting, watering the garden, recycling, not buying things. Some things in particular I have not been buying: things for The Boy to take away with him. I am making a collection of towels, crockery, tea towels and dish cloths that I don't need and putting them on the pile for him to stuff into his little car. He is poring over Gumtree to hunt up a collection of cheap and free furniture once he arrives in his new life. He is a chip off the old block. I told him I spend about $40 per person per week on food, and he told me he's not going to spend anything near that...

This week Posy decided I should clear out her room like I did for Rosy. Posy doesn't ask, so much as inform us what she NEEDS, before taking decisive action. Before I could even begin to say..'maybe next week?' she had mangirlhandled one of her giant bureau drawers out to the dining table and started tipping everything out. It was her 'craft' drawer, which meant it was full of the most enormous mess you have ever seen, every craft project she had started and abandoned over the last two years or so. I always close that drawer and shudder instead of dealing with it on cleaning day.

See those wooden drawers above? Those are our official craft drawers. Each one contains something 'useful' for all the multitude of projects that my girls get up to. We used to have a big 'Useful Box' like on Playschool, but it was a disaster. It got turned into a horrible chaotic mess that nobody could ever find anything in. We also once had a project room for all the arts and crafts and toys etc. Also a disaster. The only way I can corral the creativity is to have the dining table as project/homework table. Projects must be tidied away by the next meal, or the next day, and everything is right there handy. There's a drawer for wool and knitting needles, a felt drawer, stamps, stickers, paintbrushes, glue, a scrap paper drawer, even a 'useful' drawer with bits and bobs.

Then there's a sideboard stationery drawer.

So handy to be able to find everything you need to get every writing and homework job in one place.

And I hardly have to buy any of it. So much stationery comes into this house every day, and I save every single bit of it. Libi mentioned her 'Womble' habit a while ago. Remember The Wombles? They kept Wimbledon Common tidy by picking up everything that ever got left behind there, and using all these discarded bits and bobs to furnish their Womble burrow. I LOVED The Wombles as a child, loved reading about them to the children. I am a bit of a Womble. I just hate waste, as you well know. I have never, to my knowledge, bought a rubber band or a paperclip, and I save every piece of coloured card and paper and stickers and ribbons that just turn up here at birthdays, on cards, on envelopes, as part of old school projects, to feed the children's card-making fetish and homework project requirements. I sort them all into zip-lock bags, and into the wooden drawers. This is where they wait to begin a new life.

It takes seconds to sort bits and bobs into a bag, and then they are all ready for the project du jour.

So, back to Posy's giant craft drawer - it was full of beads and stickers and ribbons, and those craft sets that are popular with little girls as birthday presents - the project gets made (or not), and then there is left over embroidery thread and needles, and felt and buttons. Now it is all in the wooden drawers. Now Posy has a giant empty drawer that we filled with her Lego that grew (magically, I think it breeds in the tub) too big for its container, like The Magic Pasta Pot. So now her floor is tidy, her drawer is tidy (well, full of Lego, but only Lego), and we have all the crafty notions we will need for some years to come now.

If you want to see a better Green and Thrifty that isn't about stickers here's a good one I found today.