Where do you stand on cheap jewellery?
I like a bit of glitz. I am attracted by sparkle. And I do like a bargain.
But I know the cheapness comes at a price.
If things are cheap, people will buy lots and dispose of them, with the subsequent environmental damage through production, transportation and disposal.
If things are cheap, you can bet your bottom dollar, the workers are paid shit.
Still, as in many things I am inconsistent.
I bought a cheap ring online. When it turned up it was too big. So it lived in my drawer. (Another cost: we clutter our homes with shit, making us feel overwhelmed and in many ways adding to the demand for more space, more storage, bigger houses.)
I did think of turning it into a brooch but never got round to it. (Another cost: adding tasks to do to an already overfilled schedule, leading to guilt.)
The second time I wore the ring, part of it broke. I wore it the next day, and another bit broke, so I thought I pull off all the bits sticking out and have a ring with a big stone in the middle.
Nup. Looked shit.
So in the bin it went.
On the up side, that’s another thing that is decluttered.
lucinda sans 
I have quite a bit of cheap jewellery that is lasting forever. Not sure if that is a good thing. I have been to yard sales where jewellery is available and sometimes even nice, real silver earrings go for 50 cents. So I guess I won’t make a mint on my plastic bangles 🙂
Yes to the decluttering! I am opposed philosophically to cheap jewellery (ha – just kidding. How pompous!) But there is a grain of truth in it. I will occasionally buy pieces if they’re really beautiful (or if I’m on holidays and in the spending mood.) I always end up disappointed with the cheapness though. They tarnish. They break. They discolour. They turn to shit. Usually they do all that in a dingy back bit of the bathroom cabinet and it depresses me when I find them. So I’ve really stopped buying the cheap stuff. I’ve thrown out a lot of the broken crappy things and that made me feel guilty and deters me from experiencing that disappointment again. (It’s also my justification for saving up for more expensive stuff.)
Very admirable (and nothing wrong with being pompous though it isn’t pompous.)
So much about cheap jewellery is what is wrong about our consumerist disposable society.
Argh! Auto-correct. It’s ‘mouches’ not ‘mooches!’ And then araignees (spiders), moustiques (mozzies) and of course, the tapette a mouches (fly swat.) And you need to be able to read ‘Tuer’. It means to kill.