Instead of Shoppertainment

Ever heard of “Shoppertainment”? No? Well it’s when people are bored and choose shopping as their entertainment. Up until recently I believed this term to be mainly an American trend; however I’m beginning to think we are exactly the same. Being that I visit a large shopping mall about once every five years I am able to notice the difference in the amount of people shopping from one time to the next. The last time I went to a Westfield I was shocked given that Australians are forever being told that our retail sector is struggling, the place was absolutely packed!

The question I ask myself every time I go to a large shopping mall is “Why are all these people (and their families) here?”. They are there for shoppertainment. I’d rather eat fried toad than go to a large shopping mall every weekend. But apart from eating fried toad here are some other things we prefer doing over hangin' out at the mall.

Walk the dog

Go on a picnic with family or friends

Go for a hike

Go fishing

Batch cook dinner – for the nights where there is little time

Batch bake – for when unexpected guests pop over

Read a book

Gardening

Go for a run

Work on my blog

Build lego with the kids

Take the kids to the playground or bike park

Finish that job you never have time to finish

Have people over for a potluck dinner or just nibbles and a nice chat

Meditate

Play board games

Visit the museum or art gallery

Visit the library – free books people!

Visit a friend or elderly relative

Create a vegetable garden

Make terrariums or another crafty project

Help out a friend or family member in need

Yoga

Declutter

Clean the house

And there are thousands of other things we can all be doing rather than just being another mindless consumer and teaching our children to also be mindless consumers.

Comments

The Simplest and Best Chicken Broth

INGREDIENTS 1 whole chicken (free range or organic preferred) 2 carrots, chopped 4 celery stalks, chopped 1 zucchini, chopped 1 onion, chopped 4 cloves of garlic, chopped half a bunch of parsley, chopped 1 tbsp Sea Salt or Pink River Salt Pepper Olive oil METHOD Heat oil in a large saucepan and boil a full kettle. Sauté carrots, celery, zucchini, onion and garlic until lightly brown. Add chicken, parsley stalks and salt to the pan and lightly brown. Pour boiling water in the pan. When the saucepan begins to boil turn the heat down low and put lid on. Simmer for 2-3 hours then remove bones from the chicken. The best way to do this is by pulling the whole carcass out and putting in a large bowl. Then use tongs to take meat off the bone. If you want just broth then leave the chicken out and add the rest of your parsley. If you want to make chicken soup, add the chicken back to the broth. If you’re going the soup option you can add more veggies and ...

Lessons learned from Sovereign Hill

In an effort to gift our children with experiences over stuff we recently took our kids on holiday to Ballarat to visit Sovereign Hill. Instead of getting a 10 th birthday present my son got to choose where we went on holiday this year, so off to Ballarat we went last weekend. Taking your kids on a holiday isn’t exactly more frugal than buying them a birthday present, however we were looking for somewhere to go for a few nights getaway and Sammy got to make the choice. And we are so grateful that he chose Sovereign Hill! So we drove 7 hours in our Honda Civic which costs a total $60 for petrol to get there and packed our own lunch, snacks and drinks. Pretty cheap way to get to another state! We also stayed in a cabin that wasn’t super cheap (say compared to camping) but allowed us to make our own meals. The cabin also had the added benefits of heating (it was 8 degrees!) and it was a 300 metre walk to Sovereign Hill. For those of you that don’t know what Sovereign...

How to find more time and money

Recently I have been involved in helping a friend of mine move house. This particular friend has had to move house for financial reasons and will still be in considerable debt despite the “downsizing”. Something I have noticed in the move is that my friend just simply has too much stuff. Half of the furniture she had was cheap storage furniture to house half of the stuff she no longer used. It took a lot of time to move a lot of things that ended up in the massive rubbish pile in the end. This made me sad because it just seemed like such a massive waste of time and money. But then I thought “He is not alone. He is one of many. This is now considered normal”. Yes it is now normal to just keep buying stuff such as books, dvds, nail polish, shopkins, vases, candles, statues of meerkats and the latest cushions, towels, wall art and hair pins. And then it becomes “essential” to acquire storage for all this stuff. So not only is buying the “stuff” a waste of the earth’s resources an...

SIMPLE HEALTHY FRUGAL

Search This Blog