Labor Day Labors

I may have to adjust my opinion about holiday weekends. I rarely participate in them because I'm retired and don't have the same need for a long weekend as working folks. I also avoid crowds and traffic. For a long time I've considered them useless for garaging as well, just not enough sales to bother with. Yet it was over the Memorial Day weekend I found my wonderful bunny weathervane, 

and I'm very happy with my Labor Day finds!

First stop was only four blocks from home, and the first thing I saw was a section of metal deck railing, just like what I took off the old deck I had removed this summer. I'm hanging onto it for eventual use as a fence along my creek side, but I still need several more panels. I crossed my fingers that this one would be affordable, and it was. Very. As in…free! And they’re even delivering it since it was too long for my SUV. Definitely a score.

The next two sales on my list ended up being drive-bys. I couldn’t even see if there was actually a sale for all the crappy old cars sitting around at the first, and the next looked skimpy and tired. Maybe there was treasure there, but I doubt it!

Onward to one near Bush’s Pasture Park, a beautiful large park in a lovely old neighborhood. Very popular with walkers, and dogs. The car parked in front of the sale was occupied by a large golden-doodle whose owners had stopped to browse. He was very happy when they returned to the car so he could go visit the squirrels. This was the sale where I picked up a cool piece of art. Thought at first it was a watercolor print, but it's actually a photograph. 

Signed and numbered by the artist and very nicely framed, and all of two bucks. I love it with the other two original watercolors I've found recently.

I also picked up a wineglass here (broke one recently). It was priced at fifty cents. When I went to pay I handed her the two singles for the picture and checked my coins, which amounted to five pennies. Hmmm, I said, we can either break another one or I can give you five cents for the wineglass. Which was fine with her! Not sure when I last got anything for a nickel, let alone a very nice wineglass with a beautiful tone when tapped. (I always buy wineglasses by their sound.)

Another quick stop netted a counted cross stitch with one of my favorite sayings, which I have now learned dates to World War 2 and the efforts on the home front to support the war.

One more stop before heading home, where the first thing I saw was a bunch of free stuff. Good free stuff! I picked up 5 trough planters, used but in perfect condition. 

Then I saw canning jars, and grabbed two quart size I know my friend Toni is looking for. Among them was a quart jar of buttons, so I snagged that as well. You know I love me some buttons! I'll go through these soon and sort out the ones I want to add to my stash, and find a new home for the rest. It did my heart good to see them, because all the button jars I've seen recently (usually at estate sales) were quite pricey.

I also picked up a vintage hanky (yes, I sometimes use hankies!) 

and a pink bath towel with an entertaining border. 

From the size of the towel and the label I'm guessing it could date back to the 70s! 

I've been looking for a terry towel to cut up for dish cloths (I put out a fresh one every morning and toss yesterday’s into the laundry) and this will be perfect.

I think they may have had more stuff in their free pile than actually for sale, but my eyes lit up when I saw something I recognized. Several years ago I bought a carved wood jester riding a trike that was made by a Czech master puppet maker, Miroslav Trejtnar. (Alas, the photos of it have disappeared from my blog, dang it, possibly a victim of a hard drive crash a few years ago.) I was absolutely amazed to see another piece by the same artist sitting among a variety of items priced at a dollar. As a rule I don't care much for clown images, but this one I like. 

He rocks from side to side and his beads slide around; perhaps he’s supposed to be a juggler. In any case he is now mine and looks quite at home among some other wooden toys, including a French clown who was originally part of a skittles set (the game, not the candy!)

I came home happy for sure, and am looking forward to future holiday weekends !

 

Plates and Pups and Parts of Sweaters

Years ago I heard Garrison Keillor say something on Prairie Home Companion that I’ve been quoting ever since (sometimes with humor…sometimes in exasperation!):

“How can I miss you if you won't go away?”

Sorry I've been AWOL! Just been lazy about writing. But I’m touched beyond belief by comments that some of you have missed me. Gosh, you guys, you’re the best.

Actually, it's been slim pickings for several weeks. Judy and I have been out a few times and I've come home empty handed. When your very best find of the day is a five-cent staple puller you know that a) you are incredibly frugal; or b) sales have ridiculously high prices; or c) you’ve seen nothing worth bringing home; or d) all of the above. Yeah, choose d.

Of course, this is the best staple puller I've ever seen.

But Judy and I found our first full-fledged neighborhood sale of the summer today, hooray. I managed to navigate it with only a small outlay of cash ($8 in all) and bring home some goodies. I couldn’t resist this balance toy at our first stop (you know me and toys). He was fifty cents, which is my calling card, right?

I was happy to find a couple of pairs of those footie socks (purple, you can picture them) and this cute bottle. I'm going to try flavoring a small batch of olive oil with fresh basil and some of the preserved lemons I made, and this bottle seems perfect for it.

From a free box came a Ralph Lauren sweater – or what was left of it. The lady at that sale had cut it up to make a Christmas stocking, which she said came out very well. Since the sleeves are both still there, I can use them for arm warmers (or maybe leg warmers!). And maybe I can use the yoke and turtleneck for something. Hey, it was free, I can do anything I want with it!

Another free item was this little velvet bag. I was planning to make something like it to hold my new earbuds (my cat Millie chewed up the wires of my last pair!). I figured if this one was a dollar or less I'd get it and save the sewing time, and when I asked the price they said, “Just take it!” I had absolutely no problem with that.

Several years ago I found a Spode Archive Collection plate at a sale, and it's KK’s favorite whenever she eats at my house. I was thrilled today to find her one just like it (fifty cents! Twenty bucks from that replacements china place in case you need one!). AND another from the same collection, one for each of us!

(I got curious as I wrote that paragraph about the first one I found – how long ago, how much? My goodness, what a day that was! July 3, 2010, fifty cents – which was also the day I met a guy who made his own false tooth from an opal. Check it out if you’ve got a few minutes! )

My favorite finds today came from a sale of a lady who recently moved to Salem. Judy and I welcomed her to town and encouraged her to bring her three cute dogs to the dog park at Minto Brown Park. Can't remember if I've told you about our dog park, which is pretty special. It's on an island by the Willamette River, with only one road in. Most of the park is a wildlife area. The dog park section is a quarter of a mile long and wide. Big! Dogs can really run there. I estimate my Zoë runs at least 3 miles every morning retrieving balls. (Me & Fannie, not so much!) Now that I think about it, it's also where I first met Judy!

Besides three cute little dogs, this lady had some fun jewelry. I first succumbed to these ceramic owl earrings.

Judy and I were both admiring some bracelets, and I started thinking one of them might be really fun as a decoration on the pull string for one of my ceiling fans. Then the lady mentioned that she had made them, but that they had turned out too large. I'm sure my ears stood up and swiveled like a collie’s – because I rarely encounter bracelets that are large enough for my big-boned wrist. These both fit, and for a dollar each, they were mine. She did a beautiful job making them, and had to have spent way more than a buck each for the beads.

So it was a good morning, and hopefully the harbinger of more to come. I have just a few Fridays left between now and knee-replacement surgery at the end of July which will put me out of commission for probably several weeks. I'm stocking up on fun (and goodies!) now!

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.