It's not easy being Green

I've been reading my way through blog after blog of 'how to recycle cheap junk' over the last few days, and I have some serious craving to try some of those ideas out. It's probably very appropriate given my current straitened circumstances , and the economic climate, plus it feeds an innate desire to be a bit less consumer driven than I have been in the past.

Whilst in my native habitat (UK), that's not such a difficult thing to do, since charity shops and cheap shops abound - all the more so since the crisis has caused so many other shops to close down, and landlords are desperate to fill shop space. However, I'm currently in Rotterdam, NL and it's remarkable difficult to find out what thrift shops are called when you don't speak the lingo! I've managed to trace down 'kringeloopwinkel'  as a common term for recycling shops, and identified that the dutch don't seem to do the charity shop thing, it's all commercial recycling in 'circle of life' shops. Interestingly, the Dutch are the best at recycling in Europe, hitting an awesome 70% recycled target compared to the UK's 35%. They are so good at recycling their waste now, that they don't have enough combustible waste generated to fuel their waste-combusting powerstations  and have to import from surrounding countries.

So, what to try? I don't have a sewing machine handy, and I was never terribly good at dressmaking. There isnt a lot of space out here to fill with pretty 'clutter' projects and actually utilitarian items such as furniture might be of more use to me at the moment. That said, I've also decided I have a real dislike of painting lovely natural wood and woodstained items  in pastel colors and declaring it to be 'gorgeous'. So I guess I'm not going to make it big on the refashionista circuit anytime yet with 'easy' 1 hour furniture projects!

 I've self imposed myself a limit of €10 per project, and a max of 3 crafting projects in progress at anyone time (with knitting and beading projects in flight that limits me to 1!), so now with my extremely abundant project float, I'm going thrift-shop hunting.
So, off to try and trawl the grey rainy streets to see if I can spot some by eye!