Free some cash from Christmas

It won't be long now, one of the biggest expenses of the year, bah humbug! Christmas is nearly here. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and as I've said before, my name is not Scrooge, I’m just Scrooge like (in some things), what I detest though about Christmas is all the excessive consumerism, Christmas now starts in August for goodness sake, just how much stuff do they think we need to buy that it has to be available for 5 months – nearly half the year!

“How much did you spend on Christmas?” asked one person
“We spent £600 this year” the other replied,
“Oh is that all? We spent £2,000 this year” the first replied smugly!

There are always people who think it’s a competition, it’s not, it’s a celebration for the birth of Jesus, and to show love and affection by giving and receiving of small valuable gifts, ‘valuable’ in terms of sentiment rather than cost. Each gift should be something meaningful, not just a box of something grabbed from a late shop at 11 o’clock on Christmas Eve and a thought of ‘oh it’ll do’, well I’m sorry but it won't do, for me that’s not good enough.
If you really want to start thinking of Christmas early, start in January when the sales are on, buy all things like cards, wrapping paper, etc, for a fraction of the price and save them (that’s only if you really must send cards and wrap presents, and that’s if you give presents!).
But, on the subject of cards and presents, why not make your own? Throughout the year, bits and pieces suitable for card making will be thrown away, bits of card, foil etc. I’ve opened my eyes a little to rubbish and alternative uses, well a lot really, as I want to eliminate all waste from the bin, but that’s for another day.
So from now on I’ll look for a Christmas use from waste bits and pieces with the view of making my own cards.
As for presents, I’m seeing if something handmade would be more beneficial to someone rather than an over priced something or other from the vast cavernous evil den that is the supermarket, that may be used once or twice then relegated to the cupboard ready to be brought out and dusted and sold at a boot sale in a year or two (or worse still get it back as a present sometime down the line because they've forgotten who gave it to them), No thank you. Call me mean if you want to but I’m stepping off this Christmas commercial train and letting it pass me by.

Until next time: I’m going to search the loft for anything I may have bought in the sales last January that I’ve probably forgotten about.