A Times excerpt from India Knight’s The Thrift Book was enough to convince me to get on Amazon and make that book mine. It wasn’t so much the promise that there are ways to save money as the mix of sensibility and humour. What I mean is, it’s the kind of book you would go to thinking ‘Now, how did she say I should make yoghurt?’
But it’s also the kind of book you’d leave lying about for your friends to take a glance and have a laugh. And I’ve had more than one friend who has read it for brief entertainment and another who borrowed it for a couple of months (during which time, I severely missed it!).
You see, it’s become a manual of sorts amongst me and my lot. We are often heard muttering, “I wonder what The Thrift Book says about that.” And it touches so many sections of life from supermarket shopping to the joys of swapping clothes online to holidaying in a yurt. You learn that olive oil is a magical substance, which does everything imaginable.
Its greatest merit possibly lies in its invaluable list of resources from suggestions of makeup brands (which comes across as genuine not marketeering) to websites, blogs and books (which Knight suggests you get from a library) with everything you need to know about cutting your bills or making your own clothes.
It’s not the eat-pasta-for-a-week brand of thrift. In fact, Knight admits that it took her a while to realise that thrift did not equal glum. She writes that at 42: “I’ve got over lying in the bath pretending to be Ophelia, but, clearly, not over thinking money is, like, really square.”
Rather, The Thrift Book elevates thrifty living to something of living in an almost celebratory way that makes use of everything around you and refuses to waste your resources. And even if you already knew quite a lot about that (it’s been accused of being too basic, though Knight admits it’s intended to be), the author’s hilarity is worth it.
Take a look:
Click here to get it hardback on Amazon for £9.22
Click here to get it paperback on Amazon for £4.98
Adele Jarrett-Kerr
