Tuesday 13 September 2011

Doing Without...


Sometimes I think about all the 'stuff' we surround ourselves with to improve our lives. 
Do they always make it better? 
As always, I guess it depends on what we are talking about...

When we were on holidays in France we decided we didn't want to watch TV. There was a huuuge flat screen TV in the flat, but nobody was interested in becoming familiar with French TV. We read, talked and used Ipads for entertainment. 
I felt the evenings were longer and we got so much more out of them.

We have now been without our car for two weeks after The Best Neighbour in the World accidentally backed into our car outside our house (poor thing, she was devastated). It was only a rather superficial scratch with a dent on the driver's door and needed to go into the repair shop to have the entire door replaced! This is where the 'fun' (NOT) started as the company handling the claim (outsourced by the insurance company) would not give me a replacement car as my licence was not EU, but FOREIGN! This has NEVER been a problem before. After discussing, arguing, shouting, screaming, speaking with one supervisor after the other and threatening with NEVER using them again (not sure how worried they were as I hope not to have too many car accidents like this in the future), I was still without a replacement car. To be honest, I think I am loosing my 'touch'...!

So, this means that I have been without a car for two weeks. 
And it hasn't been much of a problem, to be honest. 
Our 'guilty' neighbour took Our Boy to the guitar lesson last week and this week we walked our bikes while balancing the guitar on the handlebar. 
Ok, admittedly it was a bit of an inconvenience, but the sun was shining so not too much suffering. 

Really. 

All right, I know I am lucky as I bike to work and have food delivered after shopping online. 
There are of course friends I can't get to see without using the car and other places I would have liked to go, so it would have been nice to have the car.  
But to be honest apart from this, we haven't struggled much.

Back to my point -
I wonder what else we take for granted and think we NEED that we can do without...?

By the way, the car is being returned TODAY!

(And the Yoga class starts up again!)
Happy Day!!

:-)

4 comments:

  1. Helt enig med deg, vi har helt sikkert mange "ting" vi ikke trenger...vi har bl.a. tørketrommel som er i bruk en gang annenhvert år. Og yoga..jeg kom hjem fra hytta i dag bare for å få gå på yoga i ettermiddag og det var helt ubeskrivelig godt. Har fri til torsdag.

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  2. Det er mye som er kjekt å ha, men som kanskje ikke er like nødvendig. Mye har med vanen å gjøre:-)

    Sjalet var forresten veldig enkelt å strikke, og gjort på en kveld:-)

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  3. Ja, man kan antegelig klare seg uten mye om man bare går inn for det. I huset vi leide i Danmark i sommer var det en tv, men vi brukte den ikke og savna det heller ikke. Trodde barna (4 i alt) ville spørre etter barne-tv, men nei da.

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  4. Det er jammen sant, og av og til er det faktisk greit med en liten pause. Vi har vært uten kjøkken hele sommeren, og selv om det er kjedelig å vaske opp i badekaret, så har vi lært oss å spise mye mer 'raw food' enn før. Det gjeelder å se det positive :-)
    Fin dag til deg.
    Klem

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