The Future is Now

I bought a dining table at the Goodwill Bins today.

For a dollar.

I always think when I get a particularly good deal that this one might just be the all-time most amazing score. And then another comes along and tops it. But a decent dining table for a dollar – has to be a record at least in the furniture department.

Have you been to a Goodwill ‘outlet’ – AKA The Bins? It's the last stop for all the leftovers from all the local Goodwill stores, giving them one last chance to avoid the landfill or being baled and shipped overseas or whatever they do with the mountains of stuff that no one wants. There is always good stuff that has drifted downstream unnoticed, until someone plucks it out of a bin. you pay by the pound for most things, so if your finds are lightweight you can really make out.

Fortunately the furniture does not go by weight. It gets a few days at five bucks, and then is marked down to a dollar. My table isn’t fancy 

and getting it home was a bit of an adventure; convertible with the top down to the rescue. 

Probably someday I'll find a better one, but till then this will do just fine.

And it wasn’t even the best deal of the day. I found two sweaters of the same brand in the same bin. Eskandar, made in Scotland 

and sold in places like Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. 

My guess is this pair of sweaters was donated by someone who received them as a gift from a wealthy granny and never wore them. The crew at the Goodwill didn’t recognize the brand name and so they got sent straight to the bins; this is not the time of year that sweaters are in much demand. But my rummaging hands know good fibers when I feel them. One sweater is the softest merino imaginable, the other is cashmere. I looked up the brand when I got home. Similar merino sweaters are about $1500, and cashmeres are over $2000. My price was about $3-4 each.

I wish that rich granny would give up buying unappreciated sweaters and simply adopt me. 

Meanwhile, I will certainly appreciate the sweaters!

Last week we saw something that was a first for me.

A 3-D printer, available at a garage sale. 

I wonder if they’ve been showing up on driveways for a while now, or if I might have spotted the very first one in the world.

No way to know. But a thrifter can dream!