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You can’t switch on the TV or radio at the moment without the words ‘Credit Crunch’ blaring out at you, and with the increasing costs of utility bills and petrol really starting to hit us where it hurts, the world feels a fairly fragile place. Personally, I don’t know that this is such a bad thing – if the whole world consumed like us, we’d need three planets of our size to survive. So it never really was sustainable, was it?
Looking back, the fashions fed to us with programmes such as “Changing Rooms” and “60 Minute Makeover “ were pretty atrocious – filling our houses with cheap tat, fake fur throws and superfluous quantities of cushions, only to change the look a year later. It was consumerism gone mad… and now the pendulum is swinging back the other way, as it always does.
The current proliferation of programmes such as “Jamie at Home” and “River Cottage” feel healthier – the ‘trend’ now seems to be much more ‘make do and mend’, more Tom and Barbara of “The Good Life”, less Hyacinth Bucket!
As a family, we are revelling in the ‘good life’ – we grew up in that world after all, being children of the ‘70’s when clothes, food and pretty much everything cost more of Mum and Dad’s salary than it does today. We fixed things that didn’t work, we darned things that wore out, and we ate food that was past its best before date.
Now, when we make our purchasing decisions, we make a conscious effort to look at the whole ‘life cost’ of things. We’ve spent a bit more on one of the few remaining brands of cast iron washing machines; it has a 5 year guarantee and a history of lasting 20 years. Yes, it has cost more, but with all our washable nappies we killed 2 washing machines in 3 years! So overall it’s got to be a better investment.
Our customers get that - they aren’t the people who are rushing out and buying £2 t-shirts from the supermarkets and chucking them out when they’ve lost their shape after the second wash. Our C4C clothes started with our eldest Tom and our youngest Sam is now getting them back 5th hand!
We need to consume less and that means buying better in the first place…..this is more than a trend, it has to be the only way forward.
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