Cash in the Attic.

I'm still working on the attic. Clearing up the attic has changed from merely being a necessary chore to quite interesting. You have no idea what I'm finding up there!

I'm a really good shopper, as it happens. I hate to buy anything on full price if I can possibly help it, I love vouchers and discount codes, I love hunting round sales and Ebay and I've got no objection to good quality second hand anything. Also I take the long view...if I know I'm going to really need it, even in six months or a year, I'll buy it at 90% off or whatever and store it away. Usually in the attic.

My Achilles heel in this process though is that my memory is terrible. And of course the attic is big and disorganised. So over the last few days I have been coming across little caches of this and that from more than one year past, like ancient squirrel nuts. This is great fun, actually. It gets a bit annoying when I realise I just went out and bought the exact same item, but most of the time finding something means I don't have to go out and buy another one which is great given that I'm currently skint.

For example.

1) Pair of size 9 rugby boots. (Probably owned by cousin.) Lad and I were due to go shopping for new boots this wwekend. They fit perfectly. Fantastic!

2) Six (yes six) boxes of Christmas crackers, various designs, reduced fom about £12 each to £1 per box. Would be fantastic except I just bought two more boxes, at 50% off. Oh well, they'll do for next year.

3) Three dolls of about Barbie size. Strange ones these...they come with no faces and clothes printed on cloth type paper plus felt tip pens to put the designs on yourself. I bought them in France the summer before last for 1€ each and hid them as I thought Princess was too young for them. They will be perfect for C-mas. (And yes, I did check the pens still work.)

4) A box of school uniform that I had forgotten about. Next sizes up for Princess. Great!

5)A very large box of leftover party bag presents of various sorts. I always buy too many and the excess get thrown into this box. There are all sorts of small toys and gift things. I need something to donate to one of the local shoebox appeals so these will do nicely.

6) A brand new Pokemon game for Lad's Nintendo. Yeah!

7) A box containing the swag from the Boots 90% off sale last January. Lots of nice Xmas things, like Rudolph bath bombs and such.

8) The Yarn Mountain Odds 'n Ends Bin yielded all the yarn needed for presents for sister, mother, Princess and lad. (Hubby doesn't do small hand knits except perhaps hats, and he loses these too fast for me to want to knit any for him, sorry.) Mostly yarn I'd forgotten about.

9) A sweater that I'd started knitting about 20 years ago. I've only done the striped back (very Fassett sweater) and I will never, ever wear that sort of sweater now but it will make a truely fabulous cushion cover. And I found the big bag of feather cushion pads too.

10) Christmas wrap. This really was a total surprise because I remember being down to my last roll on Christmas Eve past and having to use some christening paper for Hubby's presents instead. And not being able to find anything sufficiently cheap in the sales. However there are 12 rolls of M&S wrap up there at 10p a roll and a March receipt which probably explains the 10p bit. Also some gold gift bags. Good. Another thing I don't need to buy.

11) Cards, labels, ribbon, craft supplies. Well I won't need to buy much of them next C-mas either, put it that way....

There is a lot more, but most of it I knew was there anyway so it doesn't count. However if I decided not to spend anything on non-essentials for the next year we would probably do pretty well, except for the lack of the cutting edge beep-beep games which seem to be regular essentials for Hubby and Lad. Actually it's a bit embarassing how much I've got stock piled up there. Does anyone else do this? And no, I'm not talking about yarn and fibre stash. I'm talking about household stash. I didn't even realise I had a household stash till this week!