2012 Diary, $45

I'm fussy about the diary I use, which makes it a difficult item to buy second-hand or recycled. Not only do I need to have it in time for the new year, but I also have a preferred format: the Moleskine notebook-style, with the days of the week on the left and a facing page of notepaper on the right. Needless to say, Moleskines are not made of recycled paper. But Rebound Books, a company that uses 100% recycled paper, has released a line of diaries using the same format (with the exception of  the pages of the Little Golden Book they're made of). The bonus is that my seven-year-old got a kick out of choosing my 2012 diary for me; and I get a kick out of that.  

Diary, 50 cents

We all like to be treated like royalty now and then. My boyfriend is treated like royalty whenever he drops in on his old cricket club during a home game. I am treated like royalty whenever I am the first customer of the day at one of the cafés at which I am a regular. And everyone is treated like royalty at the Blood Bank.  

The royalty treatment starts even before you’ve entered the building. That’s right - free city parking. Then, each step of the way, you’re thanked for coming in. Quite often, just before the needle is put into your arm, the nurse might even say something like, “I just want you to know that you’re saving three lives today.” Fifteen minutes later, you're enjoying a free milkshake, party pie and slice of  fruit cake in the cafeteria.

Then, just as you're starting to think that maybe Kate Middleton ought to be envying you, you realise you don't have to feel like a fraud if you find a Blood Donor Diary in an op shop and decide you could do with it. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!

Pencil, 50 cents

My family and I went to stay at a house at the beach recently, and when we got there we realised there wasn’t a pencil to be found and that we hadn’t brought one with us. This was a problem as my boyfriend was halfway through a sudoku puzzle, so the first thing we did was visit a local op shop to buy one. We found a pencil easily enough, but we also found a few interesting books to buy, and this made the pencil redundant because it soon became clear that the only reason he was doing a sudoku puzzle in the first place was because he was between books.

Notebook, $15

When my daughter was four she informed her grandma that when she had a baby of her own, her mother would be a grandma. “And what will I be?” her grandma asked. “You’ll be dead,” was the reply. I wrote this down in a notebook, back when I was inclined to write down every little quip and comment the children made. But then the cute comments started rolling in so thick and fast that I gave up on the whole enterprise. Plus, a little voice inside my head was whispering, “You’re living in the past, man.” This notebook is made of recycled paper and old Little Golden Book covers.

Rexel 100% recycled PVC
convention card holder
http://www.acco.com.au/

Every little bit counts, so they say. But even if it doesn’t, I still feel like a bit of a dill every time I buy a coffee in a cardboard cup, accept a magnet or key ring or yo-yo with a corporate logo on it, or allow someone to write my name on yet another sticky label. But no more! The next time I go to register my presence at a conference or AGM or self-help spectacular, I plan to say to the person wielding the marker, “No thanks, I made one earlier,” and point to my very own reusable name tag (an outright refusal is generally deemed to be not in the spirit of the occasion).

Printer paper, 50 cents

I don’t generally think of myself as a hobo but once or twice a week I can be found with my head down a bin in a public place. More specifically, the plastic bag recycling bin at the supermarket and the paper bin by the photocopiers at a university library. I need the bags for lining my kitchen bin and the paper is for my children to draw on. When I came across this stack of old dot matrix printer paper, however, I got a brief break from rummaging for the latter, though I did miss turning over the children’s artwork and learning a little bit about life in an eighteenth century French fishing village.