Well the only thing to have had a continual upward trend during this pandemic has been the height of my children. Both of them are now pretty much as tall as me, and a bigger shoe size. The hiking boots I lovingly bought for P to get her through the many expected hikes during lockdown (ok so one or two walks) were grown out of months ago. Of course there was very little need to buy new clothes since we haven’t been going anywhere, but our youngest declared that whether or not we were actually going out she couldn’t continue wearing jogging bottoms that showed four inches of ankle.

On the advice of a friend, and in fear of the financial strain that would arise by purchasing two whole new wardrobes, I took to a local facebook group and put a post ISO clothes to fit a 14 year old girl or a size 6 woman. I stressed we were interested in “T shirts, jeans, shorts and sweatshirts” with an emphasis on “function over fashion” and sat back and waited.

We were immediately offered two pairs of jeans, a sweatshirt with Minnie Mouse on (unfortunately she has a really negative view of Minnie for some reason) and some vest tops but overall not a bad set of suggestions for a first response. I agreed to buy some of it and waited to see who else got in touch.

I was then offered several T shirts. I got a bit flummoxed and didn’t want to upset anyone, plus I thought it was a cheap easy way to fill up P’s wardrobe, so I didn’t look too closely and agreed buy them.

To sum up the success of my mission  let’s just say we spent an hour, and quite a bit of petrol, traversing Sheffield to pick up the items. None of the T shirts fitted (they were far too small), and one was a neon yellow lacy number that I had bought by accident. Several times in the back of the car while looking through the clothes P said “but I don’t understand what it is”.  At least we had a good laugh while she did a fashion parade once at home.

In a nutshell despite driving about a lot and engaging in conversation with various lovely women on Facebook we have ended up with one pair of jeans, and an even bigger pile of clothes for charity. The jeans may as well have been brand new as they have effectively cost me £15 plus petrol and wear and tear on my car.

Hold on though, I had received another response to my message. Maybe this was to be the answer to P’s lack of tops and leggings?

Did I want to buy a size 6 two piece black suit?

I mean I suppose it would be considered functional if either child was working in a office (and there wasn’t a pandemic meaning they had to work from home). I politely declined.

Then I put a post on offering an entire size 11-13 wardrobe full of clothes for £20. No-one wants it. Maybe social media buying and selling just isn’t for me…