How much stuff do you keep just in case? Keeping a few spares makes perfect sense if you suddenly remember a friends birthday and you don’t want to have to rush out and buy a card, but what if it’s ten years worth of extra stuff?
Over the past few months I have discovered a few stockpiles. When I collected all my stationary into one place it fitted in a 30 x 30 cm x 20 cm box – and that’s not including another box of spare sketch books. I calculated that I had at least ten years worth of stationary based on my current usage rate.
It has also taken me six months to run down our food cupboard because I had so many different types of beans, sauces, condiments, rice, and flour, and about the same time to run down my supplies of hand cream and moisturisers. Although I claim that wasn’t totally my fault – some of the hand cream was given to me!
These days I’m a lot more cautious about keeping spares and my stationary supplies consist of one set of greeting cards, 10 envelopes, a handful of scrap paper and a notepad.
There is however one item I keep a lot of – toilet paper – and not because I’m worried I’m going to run out! I order toilet paper from whogivesacrap and they comes in boxes of 48 rolls. As its recycled paper and they give half the profits to a charity that builds toilets I think it’s worth it.