The Old Year and the New

If you read novels, maybe you too have noticed this in recent years: seems like the description for just about every book includes the phrase “it changed her/his/its life forever.” Completing the unfinished sweater mom left behind, exposing a long-held secret, marrying Genghis Khan, traveling through the jungle on the back of an anaconda …you name it, your life is changed forever. Am I the only who thinks, well duh, of course it does. Every time we turn right instead of left, we change our life (who knows what was around that other corner?).

But yes, sometimes your life does change forever, and 2018 brought a wagonful of changes for me. Divorce, selling the house, moving to a much smaller house – sometimes it seemed as though my head was spinning. Through it all, thrifting remained a soothing constant, something I could count on most weeks for frugal fun. The other constant is the dog park every morning, rain or shine – an hour there and I have dogs that sleep through the day, no park and they are fidgety as jumping beans. Just like me when I don’t get to go garaging on the weekend!

Another through line has been continuing to maintain my garaging spreadsheet; I still love recording what I find, what I paid, its probable retail cost. And I'm extra glad to be able to share the year’s statistics, because one of the ‘changed my life forever’ things that happened recently was having my computer’s external hard drive die. And with it probably 85% of my files from the past umpty years. I hang my head in shame to admit I was careless about saving everything in more than one place, so I really can only blame myself (and also the hard drive, but it doesn’t care if I'm mad at it). Some pieces of writing I treasured, years of pictures – well, you know what you have in your files. But life goes on. I've decided that the drive was burned up in a fire or fell off the back of my Conestoga wagons as I crossed the prairies. As Judy so wisely put it, nobody died. I have a new life now, and my computer life is starting fresh too.

But – hooray! – I do still have my personal journals for the past 20+ years, and my garaging spreadsheet remains. So here is how the past year shaped up as far as garaging went.

First category is Accessories: bought 28 for about $37, retail would have been about $515.

Clothes: 45 for $42; retail would have been about $2500. Now you know why everything in my closet was bought secondhand!

Crafting/makery supplies: 72 items for $59; value about $900.

Décor: 45 items for $152; value about $2365. (45 pieces of décor…sheesh! But most pieces are small as in ornaments, and there was all the original art I've so enjoyed.)

Entertainment: bought 52 for $110, value of $1200. Mostly DVDs, books, CDs; the big splurge was my bike – but $60 for a $500 bike is a pretty thrifty splurge.

Furniture: only 4 pieces for $128, value around $700. The mattress & springs for $100 was spendy for me, but a great deal. And man, is that one comfy bed. 

Possibly the deal of the year was in this category – the dining table purchased for one buck from the Goodwill bins.

Gifts: 16 for $12, value about $220. Most satisfying were the things I found for my friend Jeff, including that vintage Mickey Mouse backscratcher!

Household: had to be a biggie what with moving! Bought 65 pieces for just under $170, with a value of about $3500. This category included the vintage Gaetano Sciolari brass chandelier that was free and is worth about $1800, as well as the vintage fixture I put in my new bathroom. The category also includes all kinds of practical stuff, a package of nails, sheets and towels, clothespins, a spare toothbrush…

Kitchen: 62 in this category for $105, value about $835. Although we had doubles of many items to divide, inevitably there were gaps in my kitchen equipment. A set of dishes here, a pan there, the perfect paring knife, some lovely vintage linen dish towels. (I confess I had no idea there were 62 though!)

Pets: only 7 items for them, for $6.10, value $145.

Garden: 29 items for $105, value $905. This is going to continue to be an important category, since my new place has a double lot that is…in need of complete landscaping. So far I focus more on the beautiful creek that runs about 10 feet from the back of my house rather that all that needs doing in the yard! (Have I mentioned that along with ducks and geese and a kingfisher and a zillion squirrels that there is an otter living outside my back door?)

If you’ve read my annual roundup before, you know that there’s one more category on my spreadsheet: Donations. Sometimes I bring things home and then change my mind (hangs head in chagrin), and I always vow to do better, and it's always an uphill battle. But this year, because of the extreme downsizing necessary when your accommodations shrink by two-thirds, I had to let go of a lot of stuff. Some from this year, most from previous. We held two moving sales, one at the old house and one here after the dust settled and I saw what I could actually live with instead of what I hoped would fit. Some of the decision-making was rather hard; I parted with things I still loved (remember the Steiff animals from last year?). 

But it was satisfying that everything seemed to go to the right person, so they are still loved, and honestly I can't think of anything I actually miss.

So – donations: spent $120 on the 98 items I did not keep. I'm sure a new record! But a good wake up call. My income and my space have both been drastically reduced, and I've been thinking about how I can keep enjoying thrifting without making foolish buys. 

Being more mindful must be part of it, and I've also decided to put a certain amount of cash into a special billfold that’s just for garaging. What’s there now is for the first four months of the year. If any is left, I’ll add it to the next four months’ worth, and so on. We’ll see how it works!

The bottom line? Spent $931 for the year, with a retail value of about $13,820. Even with all those donations, you can't complain about my return on investment!

And so we head into a new garaging year, which so far has been about what you would expect in the middle of winter! KK and I went to the bins the other day, where I spent four bucks on a cashmere sweater and one of these Copco 3-tier pantry organizers. It inspired me to purge and straighten my pantry – big improvement!

And we found one estate sale, where I bought a couple of pretty linen dish towels. (Okay, they ARE a weakness!) 

When I got home I realized they had not been hemmed, 

but that was an easy job, and I got to play with some of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine. 

Probably no one will ever notice the stars, but I know they’re there.

This is the Way it Was

Hooray, it's spreadsheet time! It's probably crazy how much I love looking at the past year through Excel, but it is so darned satisfying. And 2017? It was a very big year.

Bottom line? Spent $1197.50, my second highest year since I started the spreadsheet in 2005. The biggest year was put over the top by our Ekornes sofa, which would have retailed for about $4000. Well worth the money: comfortable, handsome, and the entire family (two people, two dogs, one cat) can sit in front of a fire crackling in the fireplace at the same time. 

A few steps away sits the item that put this year over the top: the large handmade bell I majorly splurged on back in July. We still ring it whenever we pass by. The splurge did not diminish my lifestyle, we still have enough to live on. I'm good with it.

That’s the spending part, but the next column on the spreadsheet is the fun one—the retail value. I’m conservative when I figure these, mainly because it's almost impossible for me to believe that people actually pay the prices I’m seeing when I look up what I've brought home. Like the Brooks Brothers Italian merino sweater I found for the hubster that would retail for right at $300. 

My price? Ten cents.

My “retail” total this year came to $21,490—an average of $18.20 value for every $1 spent. Yes, of course it is true that much of what I bought would never have entered my doors if I couldn’t buy it on a driveway. But let’s face it: there are many, many people who shop in malls the way I shop on driveways, and a lot of them have the credit card debt to prove it. I get to have the goodies and live without debt. Talk about a win!

It's fun to look at my individual categories too. All except for one: the donations category. Yup, all those things I bought that I decided not to keep. And there were a bunch this year, 70 in fact. (Hangs head in shame.) Half of them were things I bought for either crafting or décor. (A focus for 2018 will be to diminish that trend!) But even though it's a tad embarrassing to make what turn out to be buying mistakes, the total cash outlay was a little over $60, the stuff was donated to the kitty rescue that provided us with Millie, and hopefully it will help at tax time.

Clothing continues to have the highest return on investment, and this was an amazing clothing year, mainly thanks to the estate sale that spanned the first two weekends in February. The sale where I spent about ninety bucks total (which is like a zillion dollars when you are the Queen of Fifty Cents) but brought home over $9000 worth of cashmere and silk and more. 

Hardly a day has passed since then that I am not wearing something from that sale. KK and I often greet each other with, “Is that a Katherine you’re wearing?” (Katherine was the artist whose estate was being sold.) I'm still astounded by that sale, and positive it will be a once-in-a-lifetime event. And so grateful that I got to experience it.

To make it even sweeter, the Pendleton white raven blanket I found at that sale resold for over $300, thus paying not only for that sale but also for about a quarter of my garaging year!

After clothing, craft and sewing items are a biggie and have led to a lot of fun this year. I've made several Welsh-smock style shirts to wear over my cashmere sweaters and keep them unspotted, and tried my hand at textile jewelry. 

My little Dancing Bunny art quilt hangs over my sewing machine. 

I even used thrifted thread and cloth to repair a travel dog crate of mesh and ripstop nylon when family visited last summer for the amazing solar eclipse. Now that was an interesting mending project! (Of course, Millie was a huge help as always.)

Every year I swear I'm going to lay off the décor items, and every year I bring more home (as noted above in the donations!). But…I love the things I kept! As long as something makes me smile whenever I look at it, I will continue to consider it priceless.

And admit it—you would have taken home an armload of those Steiffs too, right?

Spreadsheet Time!

I never would have believed you, if you had told me when I was young and struggling to learn math skills, how much fun I would have every year playing with the numbers in my garaging spreadsheet.

I know I’m not alone in remembering ‘word problems’ as the worst. Who the heck cared how long it would take one train going 25 MPH and another train going in the opposite direction at 35 MPH to pass each other. Unless both trains were on the same track and you were riding on one of them – then you might care.


But then you grow up and find out how much fun it is to shop on driveways, and you start a spreadsheet to keep track of how much your fun has cost you. And now it’s that time of year when I get out my spreadsheet and start playing with numbers. Who knew how satisfying yard sale math could turn out to be?

516: the number of items I brought home. I have to admit I can hardly believe it! But when I look back at previous years it’s not unusually high.

0: the cost of 43 items. Many were in free boxes, including some really good stuff, like this Pendleton throw.


Others were given to me by nice people. We’d get into enjoyable conversations and before I left they’d be saying, “Oh, just take it.” I’m good with that! 

Books, magazines, DVDs, clothing, measuring cups, and more, all free. Even a flamingo.


380: the number of items for which I paid ten to fifty cents. So 82% of what I bought cost at most fifty cents. From tea towels to dog collars to a cashmere coat


to sewing notions to dishes and adorable ornaments…




…I could go on all day, couldn’t I? You probably wish I wouldn’t. Okay, the fifty cent Fairy Godmother has granted your wish!


96: the number of items for which I paid $2 or more. You know I must seriously like something to spend that much! And indeed, some of my favorites for the year cost more than my beloved fifty cents. Like the Lincoln Beautyware canisters I’d been wanting for years.


And a handsome glazed terra cotta egg. Zoe likes it too.


I would have regretted not buying this fabbo birdbath.


$35: The most I paid for a single item in 2015, which was this vintage Kitchenaid mixer.

A Kitchenaid for $35, wow, right? But I’m perfectly happy with the $20 one I found a couple of years ago, and bought this for resale. I put an ad on Craigslist a few days before Christmas, and it was snapped up by a very happy guy for $80 as a gift for his wife. But speaking of reselling…

19,200%: the difference between the fifty cents I paid for a mystery object and the profit I made on it. This conversation piece turned out to be a Nikken Magboy, used for magnetic healing (identified by one of my dear blog readers!)

and sold last month on eBay. After paying all their fees, my profit was about $96. I also sold 3 sweaters for which I had paid a total of $4 for a profit of over $125. I like to think it helps defray the overall cost of my garaging habit. 

41%: The amount of this year’s garaging that was paid for by reselling items I bought on driveways.

$690.80: Yup, that’s the total for my year o’ fun.

$15,056: my conservative estimate of the retail value.

A lot of stuff for not a lot of money. And that’s not even the best part of 2015. Back in April I got into conversation with a nice lady at her sale, and we hit it off so well that we went to lunch a few days later. And the week after that. Then she came garaging with Judy and me, and now KK is one of my dearest friends. A new friend found on a driveway?

Priceless!