Every year I
amuse myself by how much I look forward to writing this post. There’s something
so darned satisfying in playing with my garaging spreadsheet. Sorting by
categories, by how much I paid, or by how much I estimate various items would
have cost in a store, and then comparing this year to others…I just love it!
Back when I was first learning to use Excel I would never have guessed what a
fun toy it could be.
This year’s
bottom line? I spent $595 on items I estimated would cost a retail shopper
almost $11,000. A bit more than last year, but only about half of 2014’s total.
Ouch, you
might be saying, almost $600 on a hobby! Isn’t that a chunk of change? I
suppose it depends on how you look at it. Spread out over the year, that’s
about $50 a month that bought me a heckuva lot of fun. I’m trying to think of
some other weekly activity my friends and I could do and what it might cost. A
weekly movie? At least ten bucks each and we won't talk about what they charge
for refreshments in those places. A regular girls’ night out for drinks or
dinner? You know that would add up, especially the drinks part!
But you could say my year’s worth of fun cost me only about
$25. That’s because I resold items to the tune of $570 in profit. Most were
pretty small sales, though if you look at percentages some were impressive.
Like the 50¢ pair of poodle pillowcases
that cleared
almost $24 – about a 5000% profit!
The biggest
sale this year was the Hudson Bay Company blanket that so many of you loved. (As did our Zoe.)
It cleared
nearly $200, and went to a lady in Virginia who was thrilled to get it
(and considered it a good bargain to boot). It's so nice when everyone goes
away happy.
Going back
to the spreadsheet, I see that one of my big categories of spending this year
was fodder for upcycling. I bought 37 pieces for about $29. Keeping the
individual prices that low encourages me to be bold in how I use things. And it’s
so much fun to just play! I love this ruana made from a dollar fabric score and
a pair of Brazil Roxx jeans I was given.
Another almost-finished piece is a black boiled wool vest I got
back in May
(Keep an eye
out for my upcoming Etsy shop, which will have upcycles I've made and no doubt
a few choice vintage items. I'll keep you posted on that venture!)
Clothing was
by far the most lucrative category in 2016. For every dollar I spent on
clothing for me and the hubster, I would have spent over $45 in a store. The
big winners were those cashmere
sweaters from the church rummage sale that I discovered had retailed for
about $500 each.
They are
wonderful sweaters, cozy and very well made. Worth $500 each? That’s really
hard for me to imagine…but well worth the $2 each I splurged on them. I think
it would be safe to say that if you only shopped on driveways for one thing,
clothing would be a worthwhile choice. Which is a little ironic, because for
years I never looked at yard sale clothing. I'm not an average size and I
assumed I would never find anything that fit. Boy, was I wrong about that! And
now, with upcycling, I can embiggen or smallify and make even more stuff fit.
A close
second would be household goods. All that practical stuff that we use every
day. It's lovely to have high quality items that you can use without worry
because the price was so good. Real linen tea towels and napkins, hand
embroidered pillow cases,
a lead crystal bottle stopper that doubles as a
citrus juicer. I brought home 53 items ranging from fireplace matches to a
vintage light fixture from a funeral home for a total of $82, and another 33 kitchen
items for $36. The fifty-cent Dansk wine decanter is worth more that I paid for
everything.
The knife
steel gets used every day. And the item I never hope to use but I'm glad I
found? Those really
good bandaids I paid a quarter for!
I was darned
restrained in the décor department – only 17 pieces that cost $33. (Okay, okay,
there might have been a few more that
ended up in the donations pile…) I still feel a huge smile on my face whenever
I look at the Steinbach music box with the zither player and ankle-slapping
folk dancer.
Oddly, my
favorite piece of décor this year did not make it into the blog when I bought it. I found it at the same sale as the Hudson Bay blanket, for a similarly
astonishing price. A big bundle of heavily embroidered fabric encased in one of
those zippered bags that bedspreads come in. “Oh, that’s a kimono,” the lady
told me. “It’s in pieces. I never got around to the project I had planned for
it, and by now I know I never will.” We agreed on $7, and off I went with the
kimono pieces and the blanket. This was just days before I left on a 10-day
trip with a friend. I was so busy getting ready I did not even open the
kimono’s bag and look at what I had bought. It was close to a month later
before I got around to it, and I was astonished.
Instead of
being cut up or in a dozen pieces as I had imagined, all that had been done was
to detach the sleeves and undo the hem. I think it is a wedding kimono,
uchikake (but if anyone can tell me more, please do!). My husband fell in love
with it, and it was a straightforward repair job (albeit all by hand) to sew
the pieces back together. Now it hangs magnificently on our living room wall.
I mentioned
the donations pile. Sigh. Every year I hope to see the donations category
absolutely empty, that I had chosen so well all year long I was able to keep
everything. Alas, 2016 was not that year. Thirty nine items went off to the
thrift store, a total expenditure of $31.95. Most of it was movies I didn’t want
to watch again, clothes that turned out not to fit, upcycling fodder I changed
my mind about. The most expensive item was $5.
Five dollars! Oh wait, that’s
not a terribly large sum. Less than a lunch. And the donations all went to the
thrift store that supports the kitty rescue from which we got Millie. Okay, I feel
better now!
As always
happens when I look at my spreadsheet, it triggers so many happy memories from
the year – and from years past. Hanging out with good friends, talking to
interesting people, seeing homes and neighborhoods we would never otherwise get
to visit. It was a very good year.
In fact, they
all are!
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