A friend on an email list is thinking of doing a compact this year, and asked how I'd found it. When I'd written the answer, I figured it'd be quite a good blog update, too.
To be honest, I think I'd have benefitted from planning it out a bit better.
I know you can't foresee every eventuality, but it did go awry on a number of occasions - it was surprisingly hard to stick to. I did buy new clothes for my interviews, for example, which was against the rules, although on other occasions I found some very good online dress agencies and discovered the joys of clothes shopping on ebay (I got a Luis Civit satin dress and jacket in eau de nil for a wedding for £4.50, for example).
It was excellent for making me think of ways of getting round problems, without necessarily just buying a replacement - although ironically my best within rules get-around was the reconditioned washing machine which then made a pretty serious attempt to destroy the house! It was also excellent for making me think what I can do without, and for using things up. A lot of my sewing projects (Moo's quilt, Nibling's baby quilt, several dolls) have been made entirely from things I already have - not too great a hardship with a stash the size of mine, but nonetheless not something I've often done before! And I've done really well at finding sources of hand-me-downs and stuff.
Freecycle has been a disappointment, to be honest. I did score a rather wonderful sideboard from it, which will have saved me upwards of £1000, but I think the local Freecycle is terribly cliquey, and I'm convinced (with absolutely no evidence) that things go to all the same people.
The things I've found most difficult are gifts. To be honest, I have made very few gifts and bought *none* from charity shops. I did get Dan's birthday present second hand on ebay, which was excellent - there's no way he'd have got it new. But otherwise I found giving people other people's
stuff as gifts just doesn't work for me. I'm not sure why.
The garden has been both a benefit and a drain - I've spent a *lot* of money on the garden, which will last for years and years, but wasn't strictly necessary or within the rules. On the other hand, it's created a beautiful environment for the family, and part of what I spent the money on was creating a vegetable garden which has gone some way to feeding us and will continue to do that forever.
I think if anyone else was going to think about it I'd say:
1) be aware of your limitations in terms of time, expertise and equipment.
For example, one reason I didn't make gifts was that realistically I don't have the time to make everybody wonderful things. Another example; when my toilet flush broke I fixed it myself using parts I obtained free. However, I had to buy tools to do it, and sourcing the parts and actually fixing the toilet took me the best part of a month.
2) be realistic. There are times when it won't work. Don't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes it's worth compromising on the rules for the longer term benefits (this is how I justify new clothes for interviews!)
3) There is little point saving £100 by not buying an outfit, if you then spend £85 on a haircut. Think holistically :-)
4) Understand that promising yourself to do things yourself rather than paying someone else to do them often means that you are doing them *yourself*. It seems obvious, and it may not apply to other people, but one of the things I found really, really difficult was that taking on the compact simply meant that I became responsible for even more stuff around here, and often felt that there was nobody else I could share the burden with, and that I really did have to do *everything*. I did resent this.
Often. Although when I got over myself and actually did the stuff it was also quite rewarding.
I hope that's helpful. There are other things I might think about doing. I like the Green As A Thistle idea - of either giving something up or changing something about our lives every day/week/month/whatever that makes a beneficial difference to the environmental impact we make. But I'll think about it a bit harder this time, before I take it on... It has been an interesting experiment (though not technically over yet, LOL) and I'm glad I've done it. But I will also be glad when it's over.
Think I might make this email into a blog post, now... :-)



