Ebay to the rescue!

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Regular readers of my posts will probably know that I rarely buy brand new things. Most of my books, kitchen ware, furniture and clothes are second hand. Often from charity shops, though I have also inherited a lot of clothes from my mother, furniture from my parents and other relatives and have been given many things through Freegle and Freecycle. This is not just to save money–though it undoubtedly does add up to huge savings over my lifetime–but also because it saves perfectly good things from going to waste. Years ago I also bought and sold things through the ‘small ads’ in the local papers. But then along came the worldwide web, bringing online sites such as Preloved and Gumtree, which gives access to items over a much greater geographical area, and of course Ebay, which has done a lot to make second hand things more socially acceptable. Now Ebay is my go-to site whenever I want to find something particular. Last month was Big One’s birthday, and now of course she is actually quite big and finding gifts for her is not so easy (apart from books, for which she always has a long wish-list - and those have to be in particular covers and in perfect condition, so must be brand new). But I wanted to get her something other than just a big pile of books, even if only for a bit of variety. One thing she does like is quirky clothes, especially leggings and dungarees. When she’s not in her school uniform she almost always wears leggings, and I knew she wanted some fancy dungarees as well. So off I went to Ebay to see what I could find. I should have started sooner but as usual things crept up on me so I didn’t start looking until the week before. Nevertheless in a short time I had found, bid on, and won the auctions for four pairs of interesting colourful leggings in her size (shown in photo) and one pair of lovely summer dungarees in an all-over print of white flowers with dark green leaves. And they all arrived just in the nick of time too! Big One was very pleased with and excited about her gifts, and I was very pleased with my purchases. All of them together cost less than £25, including delivery. Not only that but I don’t even know where I could have found anything similar in ‘real life’ - none of the labels are brands I have ever heard of, and I don’t know any shops anywhere near that sell anything like these. So I also saved a lot of time and frustration at spending hours trawling around the shops in vain! Are you an Ebay fan? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.