In the shadow of the news, we decluttered some more today. We sent books to New Zealand, gave away outgrown clothes to the Red Cross and freegled a very faded ring sling. And on twitter I met up with @Shelterbox, who are also working in Peru, Bolivia and Madagascar. I didn’t know about any of those other disasters. I confess I have been trying not to watch too much news, but I don’t think any of these have been headlining. Surely with 24 hour news we should have room for more information – it almost seems like we get less.
And it all gets me to thinking. When I choose to send books to New Zealand, it cost money that I can’t then spend on anything else. I can’t spend it on us, can’t give it to another charity, it’s assigned once. Likewise with the books themselves, and the clothes I give away. We have choices, finite choices, and we can only ever do what feels like the best choice at the time. I wonder how the ppl on the front line in charities make those decisions. When they make that decision to go to Japan, does it pull funding from other places? Are children in other needy areas a little worse off because of this? How do they spread the money around?
I’d hate to have to make those decisions. I’d hate to be the person redirecting staff from one place to another. I guess that’s why I’m just at home with my kids, and not running some major charity :/
Weighty matters. Most of the day actually passed in a flurry of mathletics, a try out of an Orchard Toys maths Magic Cauldron game, walking to the leisure centre, rookie lifeguard and walking home again to cook. Big gmail chatted with a friend while doing her mathletics (get her multi tasking) and Small got frustrated once again by website policies that mean he needs to be 13 before he can sign up. And the baby pootled around, as she does, and indeed as she is right now.
I cooked, did I mention that? I cooked toad in the hole, using a Jamie recipe. It was remarkably successful. Small ranked it right up with pizza, and even had seconds. Given that I hate cooking things I don’t eat, but I don’t eat meat, it was a rather nerve wracking experience, but definitely one I will be repeating.
Some of what we ate we bought in the coop on the way home. I gave Big yet another lesson in economics – we looked at the prices in the vegetable section. They have stickered, pre wrapped vegetables, £1 each, £1.50 for two. The broccoli was equivalent price £3.33 a kilo. The choose it yourself broccoli was £2.10 a kilo. Even if you bought two stickered items, the loose broccoli was cheaper. Which annoys me – they are driving ppl to assume that the stickered items (mainly pre-wrapped) are a better buy, and thus driving ppl into buying more packaging and rubbish. And yet most ppl probably don’t even notice the terribly small equivalent prices, can’t or won’t do the maths to work out the pricing to see what they are spending. Grr.
And as we went around the shop, we saw the increasing number of charity branded items. Buy a pink pen for £3.06 which donates 25p to Breast Cancer Research. Or how about buy a cheap pen for a fraction of that price and donate the difference to Breast Cancer Research? If you need a pen at all that is. It’s all charitising of the worst kind. And it’s really really annoying. More to come on this topic I suspect. Not least as I received an email on it all today as well. Still thinking.
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