Got The Washday Greys...

When I decided at the start of the year to crack down on our spending and repay as quickly as possible our enormous debts, I didn't expect to have to buy new underwear as a result.

One of the things I've always 'just done' is, on the rare occasions I peg out washing, I still tumble dry all our smalls. In the past I used the tumble dryer ALL the time, even when it was a good drying day, partly through bone-idleness and partly because a tumble dryer was (and remains) such a novelty to me. Before we got one I had to rig up clothes lines across the rooms of our very cold house every winter to try to dry the kids uniforms and stuff - a hellish business - which took forever. So, even after owning a tumbler for about eight years I still love and appreciate it. However, I'd read frequently that driers use a lot of electricity so I decided that, as much as I was able I would hang washing out. We have a very long and very high line that works with a pulley (as opposed to the clothes props that were - still are - common in the North where I grew up) so it's not as if I have any excuse. The problem of electricity use became more pressing when we got a £1200 bill just before Christmas last year. EDF hadn't been reading our meter properly and to cut a long story short we're paying a stonking great £175 a month to rectify it. Ugh.

All this brings me to the new underwear situation. As well as the big clothes I am now also hanging out our undies and to be frank mine leave a lot to be desired. Grey. Baggy. Frayed. The pachyderms of nether regions coverings in fact. And, it goes without saying, sensibly big. I don't know about you all but I've always been a big knickers wearer, even as a skinny little chick. Not for me the Red-type thongs that are just a couple of pieces of ribbon....I like something far more substantial, and I put it down to the Arctic winters of my youth. O, and I'm a nesh bugger.

As chief washerwoman, folder and ironer I am usually the one who discards everyone else's ratty undies, consigning Big Man's holey old boggies to the duster pile with a curled lip. By the way, does anybody else use old (clean, obviously) underwear as dusters? The first time Big Man saw me cleaning the windows with a pair of his 'A Present For A Good Girl' pants he recoiled, aghast. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, now I have to do a little discarding of my own because it's just too shameful for my drawers to be seen in public. Before anybody suggests dying them, it's gone way, way beyond that stage. In fact, as a subscriber to the universal fear of being knocked down whilst wearing dirty knickers I should have realised long ago that being knocked down whilst wearing past-their-best knickers is equally as mortifying and done something about it. I am such a slattern.

Henceforth I will be going to that temple of sensible and economical undercoverings, George at Asda, tomorrow. I think I might have to spend up to a fiver for six pairs! Thank goodness I'll be saving £2 a tub on the Ben and Jerry's ice cream I'm planning to pick up at the same time.... ;P