22/9/15 Day 15

Well, it’s taken longer than I expected but my stuff is finally back from storage, though quite a lot of it still languishes in boxes awaiting the redecoration of the utility room so I can put it away.

Expect many redundant baking tins to appear here in due course – here’s a thing: why oh why is it that when you try a new cake, the recipe always specifies a tin that you don’t already have? In case you don’t bake, it’s difficult just to bung the mixture in any old tin because the cooking times and quantities will be up the spout.

Reasons:

  1. You see before you in the case a home laser hair removal apparatus that cost a lot, a LOT, of money yet seemed like a good idea at the time because it was a case of investing to save on salon treatments in the long term. Supposedly. Boots specified that it is suitable for use on skin as dark as mine but there are, rightly, all sorts of extra safety precautions applied with home use machines. I didn’t want to combust spontaneously in my bedroom,. for example, or start World War III. Anyway, there’s a meter there which tells you if the area of skin you want to zap is too dark for the laser and, notwithstanding that this machine said it was suitable for my type of fairish Asian skin, the meter always told me I was too dark. Using the thing on its lowest setting wasn’t ever going to be very efficacious. This machine was the latest in a series of white elephants that seemed like a good idea at the time but have resulted in major post-purchase dissonance. It’s a sad reminder of what happens when you persuade yourself you need a Thing.
  2. Then there’s a silk chiffon blouse that I’ve worn twice in four years and was a bad fashion mistake. No doubt MsDD will look stunning in it.
  3. We have two pairs of glasses with an out-of-date prescription. I think certain branches of Boots take those back to send to people who can’t afford new specs, so that’s good Karma I guess.
  4. Then there’s the hairbrush cleaner that has somehow lost all its bristles in the drawer over time.
  5. The two Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua foundations that have come to the end of their natural life anyway and been superseded by formulations that suit me better.
  6. The nail polish that came free but I’m not going to use because I was kidding myself if I ever thought I’d be doing my own nails.
  7. The wrong sort of concealer brush.
  8. The mascara that’s been good but does need to be thrown out after three months, as recommended. It really is a luxury to have two different sorts of mascara, isn’t it. and I like the other sort.
  9. The combination padlock that suddenly stopped working on the morning of our flight to Granada and had to be replaced.
  10. I think the sticky label things were supposed to be a stocking filler but they’re a little prescriptive: what if one person labels something bad news that, to the recipient of the missive, is nothing but good news? It became clear to me that no-one thoughtful could ever use these.
  11. There’s yet another Walk the Walk badge that no-one wanted and another free sample of some face stuff.
  12. And then we come to the Nike Fuelband. Discontinued almost as soon as I bought it, it showed no calories burned, only fuel points which one accumulated and fed into an unwieldly app. One accumulated daily points but to what end, no-one knows. It never measured kilometres or tied in with the Nike running app so that was another little white elephant. It’s the downside of being Queen of the Unnecessary but Desirable Gadget: many things seem like a good idea at the time. Let us draw a discreet veil over this.

So there you are. We’ve restarted the #Minsgame. I intend to see this through to the end, but I’m currently not sure when exactly that end might be.

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