To say I’ve never found the idea of “cutting back” particularly appealing would be something of an understatement. I am naturally extravagant; I am also naturally spectacularly useless with money. It’s an unhappy combination that has, for two decades, resulted in complete dependency on my overdraft facility and on assorted loans, and in long periods of a panic-denial-panic cycle. Let’s just say I’ve come across my fair share of bailiffs over the years. (One year they appeared on December 23, which was nice. I was out shopping.)

In 2007, before I decided that I really needed to get a grip once and for all, I was served with bankruptcy papers — not for the first time. I had two books in the top 10 bestseller charts at the time. It’s not that I can’t earn money, or that I don’t earn enough of it. It’s a complete inability to manage money, full stop — and, to be frank, an inborn lack of interest in doing so. I think I subconsciously saw my financial idiocy as a sign of a rather charmingly bohemian easy-come, easy-go approach to life in general. I know: it’s pathetic. (It’s perhaps no coincidence that my father died a double bankrupt and that my mother’s attitude to money is quite breezy.)

I share this rather intimate information to pre-empt the obvious accusation about my writing this book: ie that it’s all very well for a well-paid, relatively successful middle-class person who lives in a lovely house in a lovely corner of London to write about thrift — pull the other one, Marie Antoinette, it’s got a Sèvres cowbell on.

But, actually, my investigations into — and eventual embracing of — thrift have their roots in necessity. It dawned on me that nothing was going to improve unless I made fundamental changes to my spending habits. You may not have been served with sinister legal papers or become blasé about bailiffs, but it’s a rare bird these days that doesn’t feel a little belt-tightening might be in order, what with recession, the credit crunch, the rise in the cost of living.

My new-found love of thrift also has its roots in a strange and unfamiliar feeling that has been creeping up on me over the past few years. I am a child of the 1980s: I believe in consumption, conspicuous or furtive. I love shopping so much that I wrote a book about it. I have no guilt about the number of bags I own. Many of my generation despised “hippies”, and, by extension, “hippieish” habits such as recycling or knitting your own socks.

But, hippie contempt aside, as the years passed even I succumbed to imperceptible greening. I started finding myself peculiarly irritated at the amount of plastic used in supermarket packaging. And because I read all the papers every day for my job, then I thought that it was really pretty shameful to be shoving said papers, several trees’ worth, into a bin liner every week. Little by little, I became greener. We’re talking eau de nil, or chartreuse on a good day, rather than darkest forest green, but there was a perceptible shift in my attitudes. Today, I can’t imagine not recycling — it’s just what you do; and I can’t imagine merrily chucking away perfectly good food either. Or being mean about hippies.

At the same time as all of this, I began to find my own conspicuous consumption slightly nauseating. Not all the time, obviously: I understand, and dearly love, the thrilling kick of pure pleasure that comes from buying a lovely dress, or indeed a lovely holiday, and I’m not into self-flagellation (or wearing hideous clothes, no matter how worthy). But there was, it slowly dawned on me, something gross about wanting something and buying it, just like that — thank you, Amex, and sod the consequences.

Now, I know that I am extremely fortunate to be able to have done this at all. And I know I sound spoilt, but I’m trying to be honest. Five years ago, buying stuff I didn’t need was my idea of bliss. But these days my treat of choice comes from a yarn shop in north London, not from the Chloé concession in Selfridges, and if I want to give someone I really care about a present, I may actually — gasp! — make them something. And here’s the clincher: I would consider the something as chic and stylish as anything a department store could have produced. Chicer, sometimes.

One of my favourite recent birthday presents was a beautifully knitted Lurex scarf. The friend who knitted it for me had some little Cash’s name tapes made that said, “Made for you with love by Alison” in red curly writing. The woman’s a lawyer; she doesn’t have much spare time. She could have gone anywhere and spent any amount on my present, but it wouldn’t have made me feel a fraction as delighted. So: feeling poorer, feeling greener, minding more, realising that you don’t have to be a professional to be able to make things with your hands and that making things with your hands is unexpectedly and wonderfully rewarding.

And the next surprise, no less important, is the sense, long lost and now regained, that I am doing my bit. I understand that my bit is very small and that, globally, one first-world person’s idea of thrift is another third-world person’s idea of unimaginable, obscene luxury. But we all do what we can and it’s got to be better than doing nothing at all. I’ll never be a full-on eco-warrior, or become a fan of those hideous light bulbs we’re all supposed to switch to even though they make everything look disgustingly ugly, and I’ll always choose indulgence over sanctity. This is not a guide called How to Be Green, or How to Be Good. If you want to read about the kind of thrift that involves saving rubber bands and turning them into balls to give your children for Christmas, this is not the right book for you. It’s not about cheeseparing. But if you’re interested in living well and stylishly, in valuing beauty, in saving money in unexpectedly satisfying ways and in feeling like a useful member of the human race at the same time as enhancing your life in dozens of little but significantly pleasing ways, read on. You have nothing to lose but your overdraft — and nothing to gain but a fresh look at the true value of things, yourself included. Being thrifty makes you feel good about yourself, and you can’t put a price on that.

SENSIBLE SUPERMARKET SHOPPING

Shop locally, daily, buying only precisely what you need A bag of pasta, say, and some overripe tomatoes going cheap at the grocer’s. Add an onion, olive oil and some basil from your windowsill and you have supper for four for about 50p a head. This works extremely well on the thriftiness front, but I do see it can also be completely and irritatingly unpractical for most people who work. In which case . . .

Shop online This discourages that slightly dazed aisle-browsing most of us do — “Oh, a new delicious-looking product. I’ll just stick some in my trolley, even though I have no idea when we’ll eat it, or what with.”

Better still, shop online from a properly compiled list What I now do is sit down with my recipe books and plan what I’m going to be cooking that week — yes, I know, I am a good little housewife. Not only does this save you a fortune — no impulse buys, nothing unnecessary, nothing that’s going to sit there quietly going past its sell-by date — but it stops you buying snacky things that make you fat.

If you find yourself naturally resistant to the idea of buying discounted food because you’re middle class, get over it It was £5 30 seconds ago and now it’s £2.50. It’s exactly the same food. Snap it up.

All supermarkets put the most expensive stuff at eye-level Look up or down for the perfectly respectable, cheaper options.

Stop shopping at the “posh” supermarkets I’ve shaved a fortune off my monthly food bill by frequenting my local non-posh supermarkets, which I’d previously discounted on the snobby basis that they felt like shopping in Albania in 1971 — semi-bare shelves, hideous lighting.

The excellent mysupermarket.co.uk works like an ordinary online supermarket You fill your trolley with stuff, but, brilliantly, it then works out whether you’d be better off shopping at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado (Waitrose) or Asda, based on what you’re buying. The differences can be startling.

FEEDING YOUR FAMILY

I recommend two wonderful books. The first is a brilliant little volume by Gill Holcombe, a mother of three, called (deep breath) How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy, Balanced Diet with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three Saucepans (One with an Ill-fitting Lid) and No Fancy Gadgets — Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher . . . It costs £9.99 and is published by Spring Hill. The hearty, honest, family-friendly recipes are delicious, and she means it about “very little money” — the weekly meal-planners at the back of the book include shopping lists with costings (for 2007) and average out at about £30 a week for a family of four (and she only uses organic meat. QED).

The second book is, maddeningly, £25, but to be fair is practically encyclopedia-sized. Called The Kitchen Revolution (Ebury Press), its premise is to return to the days of good housekeeping, save money, time and effort, and put an end to waste. Using its weekly shopping lists (averaging £50-£60 for a family of four, and which, brilliantly, you can download online, print and take to the shops), you can make one big meal from scratch, one to freeze, two meals using leftovers, one cheap seasonal supper, one meal from your larder and one pudding.

DINNER PARTIES

A surprising number of people still feel a “dinner party” is preferable to a kitchen supper and requires, to be successful, linen napkins, stiff little flower arrangements and expensive ingredients, to say nothing of giant amounts of effort. Actually, what it requires is excellent company, the kind of friendly food everyone likes, and copious amounts of wine and water — tap, please: it’s free and it tastes good. Bottled water has had its day, in terms of both the money it costs and the plastic it uses.

So the first thing to do is to relax and stop approaching it as though it were a military campaign or a personality test that would reveal deep secrets about you, one of which being that you’re cheap. Nobody cares, or if they do, you need to get yourself some new friends.

CHRISTMAS

I am obsessed with Christmas but I was still paying for it in June. This is what I now do to save time and money:

If there is a large number of you Agree with each other only to give presents to the children. If that’s an unbearable prospect (I feel your pain), agree on a set budget — £5, £10, £20 — per present per head, and make it clear that busting the budget is not an option.

Make everyone bring something, matching your request to their income Last year I efficiently sent everyone an e-mail making them responsible for one aspect of Christmas Day: flowers, candles, napkins (after years of kitchen roll), brandy butter.

Start shopping early, like six months ahead And do as much of it as possible online. It cuts down on stress levels and spreads the cost.

If you’ve left everything late and feel panicky, head to Argos It opens early, closes late and has extremely competitive prices, and it is possible to find pretty much something for everyone there.

Make as many presents as possible Don’t start doing this on December 20. I try to make little things throughout the year, and keep them in my present drawer.

Get the children to make presents too Nobody doesn’t like a giant beribboned box of home-made fudge. More edible present ideas here: www.wondertime.go.com/life-at-home/article/mommys-little-helpers.html . Teenagers often make brilliant music-compilation CDs — an excellent gift for the middle-aged kidult.

Use recycled wrapping paper I also love brown paper with coloured string, and newspaper with beautiful ribbon (from the haberdasher’s), all at a fraction of the price of ordinary wrapping paper. Use whatever you have to hand: old calendars (nicely seasonal), old maps, the horoscope page (pick a good one).

CRAFT WORKS

If you’re under 30 and fairly with it, you’ll understand what I’m talking about when I say the craft movement is huge and super-cool.

I could write an entire book about all of this, and about what it means for so many young women to be redefining domesticity in such empowering, self-sufficient ways. For our current purposes, though, all you need to know is that there’s never been a better time to get into crafting. Make craftster.org your first port of call. The site contains everything about everything to do with crafts, as well as being a giant online community.

Then move on to etsy.com. It’s like a huge crafts mall, containing tens of thousands of individual stalls run by people selling the stuff they make. It sells absolutely everything you could possibly imagine: handmade clothes, accessories, jewellery, bath goods, wedding- cake figurines, frames, ceramics, knitted stuff, art (some of it fantastic), toys — and that is the merest tip of the world’s biggest iceberg. It’s marvellous and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Etsy is the first site I visit if I want to buy someone an original (as in, often, literally one of a kind), lovely, bargainous present. Plus, obviously, you’re not lining the pockets of some giant greedy-guts corporation; you’re (gently) lining the pockets of a fashion student in Brooklyn, or a mother of four from Dorset who crafts in her spare time. Every item you buy from such a person strikes a blow against mass production. Everything about Etsy rocks.

If you are any good at making anything at all, I strongly urge you to set yourself up with an Etsy boutique; as some of the craft bloggers who have Etsy shops will tell you, you can start earning serious pocket money — after which, of course, the sky’s the limit.

EMOTIONAL THRIFT

I believe that part of the reason so many of us feel obscurely dissatisfied in some way is to do with our strange, deluded (and very unthrifty) expectations. I also believe that these are a direct consequence of two things: a) celebrity culture, in which everyone always seems beautiful, rich, happy and fulfilled, and we, by comparison, seem plain, poor, beset with small miseries and chronically unfulfilled/frustrated; and b) the sneaky influence, and legacy, of all those thousands of self-help books, which have now been around for a couple of decades, and which all contain the same message: you’re super-special and deserve everything, and if you’re not getting it, it’s because you’re a victim.

Point a) is easily dismissed: it’s called PR and I sincerely hope that the lovely readers of this publication have enough gumption to see the smoke and mirrors for what they are. (It’s also called airbrushing, and sometimes eating disorder, and often drug habit.)

Point b) is more prevalent and more damaging. You don’t even have to have read the self-help books for their message to have trickled through, as though by osmosis. We’re all fluent in psychobabble and we all love to emote — both of which aptitudes would have our grandparents spinning in their graves. We seem to have lost any idea of the merits of self-control or even piping down occasionally.

This isn’t (quite) a plea for all of our human transactions to have a tragically repressed Brief Encounter vibe about them. But it is a plea for a return to a stiffening of upper lips. We’re all damaged to some extent, and we all carry around our emotional burdens. They’re not that interesting. I liked it better when the answer to “How are you?” was inevitably “Fine, thank you”, even if the person in question only had moments to live. Instead, what you now often get in response to your polite inquiry is a detailed catalogue of grievances and perceived injuries. But being free with personal information in this way doesn’t make you an “open” or “emotionally in tune” person. It just makes you sound really needy, like you’re the only thing that matters.

Going on and on about yourself, or about a thing that has happened to you, is incredibly bad manners — it makes any conversational exchange about you and you only. I wish people would desist — not just because it would make me happy, but because I genuinely think it would make them happier too. If you are what you eat, you are also what you think, and if what you think out loud is relentlessly self-centred and negative, it kind of follows that you’re unlikely to be especially chipper.

What you need to do with a bad thing is get over it. Your boyfriend has dumped you: it’s very sad, but there you go. It doesn’t get any less sad if you discuss it solidly for three weeks (or three months) and turn every single conversation round to the subject of your deep and unique unhappiness. Be adult: shoulder your burden, process it and move on. We’d all like to marry incredibly studly millionaires with PhDs and well-developed social consciences, but I suspect they’re probably a bit thin on the ground. We’d all like to be promoted into the stratosphere, but it’s unlikely to happen if we insist on leaving at 5.30pm on the dot and are intent on our “right” to every single holiday. And anyway, sometimes what you have under your nose is exactly right for you, even if it (or he) doesn’t quite match the fantasy version.

It seems to me that too many of us believe so much in fantasies that we waste all the goodness of what is real and tangible. Appreciate what you’ve got, even the really small things. For me, those are often domestic. Everyday happiness, as opposed to one-off great bursts of pure ecstasy, is intricately tied in with tiny everyday events: the jaunty-looking teapot that pours without dribbling, the children’s bath time, an especially good book. These things aren’t sexy or envy-making, but they are the fabric of all our days. Concentrating on them, and on all the small joys they provide, can be intensely fulfilling. Moaning because you can’t afford a £300 pair of shoes is not. Neither is moaning tout court.

Be happy. We are all blessed, in thousands of different ways. So we’re not a size 6, cavorting on a yacht with George Clooney. So what? I’d rather be sniffing my babies’ heads. There is enormous beauty in everyday life, and it doesn’t cost any money to look at it and feel glad to be alive.

CLOTHES

I hate cheap clothes. Well, no, that’s not entirely true.

There are some cheap clothes I absolutely love, and I know for a fact that it is entirely possible to look like a million dollars on about 30 quid if you’re judicious. But I hate the high-street stores that sell very cheap clothes, and the very cheap clothes they sell.

How do we think it became possible for a new dress to cost £6? If the finished garment, including the store’s mark-up, costs £6, what do we think the person who made it was paid? What kind of conditions do we imagine they were working under? And how old do we think they were? Now, I like clothes and I like a bargain. But really, who could wear these clothes and feel good about it? (Answer: millions of people. I find this insanely depressing. And they still look awful.)

The following stores have all explicitly stated their opposition to child labour: Marks & Spencer, American Apparel, H&M, Arcadia Group (includes Topshop, Burton, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, Dorothy Perkins), Gap, Adili.com and People Tree.

What I would say, counter-intuitively (yes, I know, it’s supposed to be a book about thrift), is: when it comes to clothes, always buy the best you can afford. Spend as much money as you are able to, only don’t do it very often — like, once or twice a year, not every Saturday. One fantastically cut, top-quality coat will last you upwards of 10 years.

A classic little black dress can last decades — and will be nicked by your daughter and fought over by your female grandchildren. A cashmere jumper is chic, warm, durable and beyond fashion. Good underwear can shave off 10lb, which I call entirely quidsworth (check old-lady-style underwear shops for old-fashioned girdles — much cheaper than miracle pants and just as effective. Also, they can be curiously sexy, in a reinforced-nylon-gusset kind of way). Spend as much as you can on classic pieces. And: look after your clothes. This sounds obvious, but it’s a lost art. Even good-quality clothes need a little help.

Here’s what I think: dry-cleaning is mostly a myth, and an exorbitant myth at that. Clothing manufacturers have to protect themselves against shrinkage, which is why they stick “dry clean” labels in everything, willy-nilly, but the truth of the matter is, you can wash nearly everything by hand.

I was sceptical about this when I was first told, by a friend with a dazzling wardrobe and a serious thrifty streak, but it turns out to be true. Here’s the information: anything that has a label saying “dry clean” can be washed by hand. Anything that has a label saying “dry clean ONLY” can probably still be washed by hand, but approach with caution (see ktcampbell.com/domesticity/hand_wash.html).

The easy method and the one to use on anything you’re especially anxious about: go to the brilliant Lakeland (lakeland.co.uk), and spend £8.99 on their Hagerty Dry Cleaner Kit. This marvel will turn your tumble dryer into a dry-cleaning machine (which is really what a professional dry-cleaning machine is — a huge dryer plus some chemicals) and clean up to 16 items. Use without fear — it’s brilliant and it works, even on big things such as coats, for 56p a pop.

HOW TO BUY BARGAINS FROM THE USA

Many US online stores don’t ship outside North America. So you’re stymied. Except, not. This is what you do: go to myus.com and get an account (not free, but worth it). What this company does is provide you with an American address, which you use when buying from US websites. They then forward your purchases to your UK address, whether they’re clothes, books, rugs or furniture. Dead simple and dead ingenious, especially as there are incredible bargains to be had from US online shops. 1

Beauty on a budget

* You are going to thank me for this. It’s the aspirin mask, which I discovered on makeupalley.com. Aspirin contains a beta hydroxy acid, the main component of expensive designer exfoliators/creams. Cost of said products: upwards of £40. Cost of aspirin mask: pence. Get six plain, uncoated aspirins. Crush them with the back of a spoon. Mix with water to make a paste. Put the paste on your face. Leave it for 10 minutes. Rinse off, massaging to exfoliate as you go. For God’s sake, keep your mouth and eyes shut. Pat face dry. Open eyes. Look! Your skin looks about a million times better. Use once a week, twice in an emergency.

* Mineral foundations have changed my life. They’re made of ground-up minerals and pigments, specifically oxides of titanium and zinc, both of which occur naturally. There’s nothing dubious in these products at all — no waxes, oils, chemicals, artificial colours or preservatives. Bare Escentuals claim that you can sleep in theirs. Mineral foundation gives you almost airbrushed-looking skin and covers every bump and shadow. It stays on all day, even if it’s boiling hot. It doesn’t look or feel like you have anything on. And my favourite brand, the stupidly named Lily Lolo, is so cheap it’s almost a joke: a little £12 jar will last months.

Extracted and adapted from The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less by India Knight, published by Fig Tree (Penguin) on Thursday at £14.99. Buy it for £13.49 (inc p&p) through The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585 or at timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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