Thrifting

One of my favourite hobbies is thrifting or charity shopping. Living on a budget and trying to live by the mantra of reduce, re-use and recycle makes thrifting a regular activity for me. But I also get a huge buzz of satisfaction from my finds and the cheaper the better. Can you tell I was never the designer label type of girl?! I don't actually like shopping at all but sometimes I pop into my local charity shops to have a root around. Although there are about 8 shops locally they are not what I call cheap anymore. Since E-bay there are plenty who know how to value collectables properly. However the kind of stuff I look for; fabric, books and toys are not that valuable so I can still afford them.

I am trying to build up a wooden toy collection for Alex. I was leaning this way before the Chinese toy recall this last month mainly because I notice that Alex much prefers his wooden toys to his plastic ones. Although I have to confess that as he is car mad he does have quite a metal car collection (mostly thrifted). I just hate the plastic stuff and especially the stuff with logos like Postman Pat etc on them. The wooden toys feel better in your hands, kids seem to prefer them, they last longer, they age nicely and I prefer the look of them around the house.

So far I have bought wooden bead game (£1), a wooden elephant (£1), childrens wood dominoes set (50p), wooden blocks for a village (£1), the ELC wooden farm set (£2), a wooden circus train (20p) and a wooden pairs game (50p). I have succumbed to some playmobil cowboys and camper van as they were so cheap and I loved playmobil as a kid. The other thing I buy is old kids books, mainly for the cute illustrations. So far a Babar book, Richard Scarry, Mark Twain's Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and some crafting with kids books.