Be careful what you wish for

The prayers of those concerned by the much publicized "drought" conditions appear to have been answered, at least partially - the 24-hour solid downpour on Sunday saw an already wet and miserable April out, prompting one commentator apparently to coin the phrase "the wettest drought on record"!  After a brief spell of sunshine yesterday, yet more heavy rain has fallen this morning, leaving our lawn more like wetlands or mudflats than a lawn.  Whether it'll recover in time for the summer is at the moment anybody's guess.

So since gardening was a bit out of the question, I set to the task of tidying up a bit round the house instead - attacking amongst other things the small mountain of padded Jiffy bags which we'd accumulated by virtue of buying most things online (and consequently delivered by post) these days.  I supposed I'd hung on to them for two main reasons: one is that it seemed a bit wasteful to just throw them away, and secondly they did come in quite handy when I had a brief but mildly successful spell of selling stuff on eBay a year or two back.

Although I kept some - and a pile of bubble-wrap which might come in handy for something one day - the rest I dumped in the bin.  Had I still been at work, I'd gladly have donated them: the library was always in need of them for posting books off in.  However in the absence of any alternative recycling options (I don't think you can recycle them as paper/card, because of the plastic padding they contain) I didn't reckon actually trying to sell them was a viable idea: they're probably not that expensive anyway and it's a bit counter-intuitive to pay to post off packaging material, although I suppose someone might've bought them and collected them in person?  Whatever.  There'll no doubt be plenty more where those came from!   

Time for a spring-clean

Looking around me in the house this morning, the realization dawned on me that it's about time - well past time, in fact - that I had a proper clear out. Between the stuff that doesn't fit me anymore (some of which never did), the stuff I don't like and don't wear, the stuff I bought on impulse and never used..... you get the idea. So since coincidentally I got an email from eBay last night saying there's a free listing weekend this weekend, I'm going to try my hand at selling.

I've never sold before, only bought - so I'm not sure if it's best to cram in as many listings as possible on the theory that buyers like a lot of choice, but I shall be glad to see the back of some of the accumulated junk if only to make more room to live in. It's certainly something I've toyed with doing before but never got round to, so I just need to motivate myself to whip out the camera, start taking some pics and writing a bit of "copy". I'll perhaps start off with the what's in best condition first since that's what theoretically is worth the most - though on eBay that doesn't always follow! It sounds like a bit of fun anyway: I can always try again later with what's left: the only real alternative being to simply throw it away.

Recycle-mania

Although I wouldn't describe myself as a keen fanatic about recycling (aka saving the planet), where it's easy and reasonably convenient I don't have any hesitation in doing my bit. We've had a special blue-lidded wheelie bin for some eighteen months or so now, and even with just waste paper, newspapers, cardboard, tins and bottles, it fills more quickly than the "ordinary" green bin does. We also get a scrap metal guy with a lorry (and a frightfully off-key musical horn sound!) round on a fairly regular basis.

A growing innovation in recent months is an absolute deluge of charity clothing collection bags left in the letterbox: the idea being to fill the bag with old clothing (and sometimes but not always books and bric-a-brac as well) which will, allegedly, be collected on a specified day later in the week. Except that I've never yet seen anyone actually doing the collections, resulting in any full bags left littered about the street. I'm skeptical too about how much of the money actually goes to the charity concerned, and how much of what's supposed to be resold actually gets siphoned off as the collector's profit, because judging by the number of bags we get left - sometimes two or three a week - it seems like big business. I've so many of these wretched bags accumulated at the moment in fact that to fill them all would take every single item of clothing that I own! So I'm just going to use them as bin liners, which will save me buying any, and the clothes I don't need I'm going to sell on eBay. After all, charity begins at home, as the old saying goes.