Trash & treasure aficionados - seekers of pre-loved stuff of all sorts, enter here!

Rockhead your idea reminded me that the Mr and I always thought an old newspaper box would make a great aquarium stand. Turns out somebody's done it!



(And there's going to be a lot of those boxes kicking around in the future, it seems...)

Oh! me me me!

I have an old singer . Works even.Iron worked bottom too.


I love it

I almost never buy anything new except at the grocery store. I cut out belonging to Costco since all the new stuff that I don't need was too tempting. Well, once in a while I'll go to Target for a certain kind of hangers, for example. I bought a silver ring and silver bracelet, new, when I first came to Albuquerque. Oh, and once every several years I buy new Dansko clogs or some running shoes.

Clothes, housewares, all from the Salvation Army, GoodWill, or miscellaneous thrift shops. Books, all preowned.. and I love used bookstores in general.

I have some Le Cruset cookware from back when I used to buy new and do love it. Never have seen it at a thrift shop, but did buy an equivalent sort of pot from Belgium at a thrift for something like $7.00.

Treasures over the years? Some of them have been clothes from a thrifts in Santa Monica and west Los Angeles..
an Yves St. Laurent dark purple wool coat ($15.00?), an Armani wool jacket ($10?), a couple of previously very expensive irish wool coats, a Dior dress that was too small for me but I gave to a friend - that one might have been $5.
Lamps (a big italian ceramic one, $10.), tablecloths, heck, my sofa back in California was from St. Vincent de Paul's thrift. Our gallery refrigerator was from St. Vincents. I've bought armoires, chests of drawers, rugs..

Jewelry - lots of good stuff. A Guess watch that I like, several bracelets, including one recently from a pawn shop that Diane and I went because the guy who owns the shop also fixes watches. That bracelet is silver, has silver scarabs all linked.. ($15.00)

My car is pre-owned, all my houses have been. I'll admit to buying other appliances new.
MsOlga, I just borrowed the Frenet Branca book from Diane this week - haven't read it yet.

it's still there, May Court Bargain Box Resale Shop - Club members and volunteers came together to support the shop for the better of the Club and Community. Consignment and donated items are received, priced and sold in our resale shop. The shop is opened from Monday to Saturday, from September to June.

did you know that The Gingham Door in Barrie is affiliated with them

The Association of May Court Clubs of Canada

Yup!

You mightn't believe it, aidan, but around here, you can't do that. Once it's in the dump, it stays in the dump. The attendants think it's dumb, too.

I guess there are liability issues, but really it's such a waste to throw out stuff that someone else could use.

The Mr and I rescued an old-fashioned spot light that a high school drama club was throwing out and re-wired it as a torchiere (it was on an adjustable wheeled stand). I suppose if we had the different coloured filters for it we could open our own disco

Good morning. I see there have been some new & interesting posts overnight. Thank you, osso, Tai, Rocky, shewoflf & roger. I'm still catching up.

We've mostly talk about the virtues of op shops/thrift shops. And there certainly are many.

But I was wondering if any of you have thrift shop disaster stories you'd like to share?
For example, the elderly mother of a friend of mine was something of an op shop addict & she loved nick nacks. (knick knacks? ) She could never turn one she liked down & because the pre-loved variety of nick nack is so affordable, why buy only one when she could buy six? I have never seen anything like her home. Every spare bit of space was covered with weird ornaments .. dogs, cats, children, flowering things, vases .. you name it, she had it! She was in seventh heaven, though, & always looking for more additions to her fabulous collection!

Oh, hon, you've just hit upon one of my all-time-favorite hobbies! In the US we call them "thrift stores" (or I do, anyway).

I spent almost 5 years buying vintage needlework items (pattern books, yarn, thread, whatever) at local thrift stores, and selling them on eBay.

I did fairly well with that micro-business. (In this US economy, I've recently discovered, this no longer works!)

I love thrift stores! These days when I go to Wal-Mart, I get "sticker shock" at a $10 shirt. (I think, OMG, you'd pay $10 for that piece of crap? It's not even linen! It's nasty polyester!)

Just last weekend, husband and me finally found the loveseat and coffee table we've been seeking for several months:



At a local thrift store (Florida), we bought the loveseat for $37.50; it was made by Klaussner in NC (US). The coffee table, which is solid wood (NO pesky veneer, and quite heavy) was $12.50. It has a 1974 date underneath.

So, yeah, $50 US for the set. A bargain if I ever saw one.

My happy thrift-store purchase about 3 weeks ago was 2 pairs of slacks, made by the Flax Clothing Company. New, they'd cost $65 each. Used, and on sale at a thrift store, I paid 50 cents each.

This is SUCH a huge discount I can't even figure it! I adore these slacks, too, in 100% linen.

I can sew very well, and so I modify much of the clothing I get at thrift stores. I can buy 100% silk (or linen) slacks for maybe $2, and put a drawstring in them, taking maybe 5 minutes, and save myself $100. No, really!

I think of thrift stores as a treasure-hunt. With knowledge of what can be cleaned up, you can really rake in the dollars!

I once got an herbal book for free, when a local thrift store was closing. I auctioned that book off on eBay and got $150 for it. (It had an addendum by the author's wife, so it was a rare book.)

I also auctioned off a Coach-brand purse, which I'd gotten for 50-cents because the zipper was broken, and sold it for $35.

It was great fun with eBay, but frankly a lot of work... and as I said, with the US economy so bad these days, such plans no longer work. For my own purchases, however, I still haunt all of our local thrift stores, and I do very well there (and love it!).

Oh, yes, you have to know when to let things go!

I recently gave away 6 full 39-gallon garbage bags full of yarn/thread to my local thrift store. I'd bought it at thrift stores and finally decided (after several years) I'd never use it.

As it happened, hubby and me were in the thrift store when someone very-happily bought one of MY bags of yarn/thread, for $8! It was easily worth the $8, but still, it was strange to see someone so happy over the yarn I'd rejected, and given away.

Yeah, it sorta makes you wonder if you made the right decision, doesn't it, BK?

Me, I sometimes wonder about my 34 fabulous watches. Particularly at daylight savings change-over times!

I started picking up lanterns to light the yard for a bbq and kept on buying them! They look so pretty when you get them all lit up at the same time.

I also collect what I guess would be called coffee decanters (?) My favorites are the Turkish looking ones -- sort of like this:

Nice yarn ya tell, there, Boris...

Oh, I dunno, I think it was worth my entertainment value for the two+ years I admired that yarn!

And as for your watches, well heck, at least you don't have to "build a shed out back" to house them, right?

Try not to use these dingii or samovars. They are loaded with coppwer and lead and antimony. An acidic coffee, well aerated will have a ph of about 5.9 and can solubilize these metals into your cup. Look but dont ever use.

I bought a giant apple butter cooking pot. Its about a 5 gallon pot made of copper that is "dovetailed" and held together with old timey solder which was silver, lead, and antimony. QWe use it to hold magazines in a downstairs room.

Hardly disaster stories, boomerang! (Apart from the compulsion, of course! )

That coffee decanter is lovely. I wouldn't mind 34 (or more!) for those, myself!
Do you display them all together? Must be quite something to see!

Can't fault you on the lantern fetish, either, I'm afraid.
I can just imagine how beautiful the display must be on a balmy summer evening. I think you might actually need more of those!

Not yet I don't!

Hey, sounds good to me, farmer!
Were you actually intending to use if for cooking when you bought it?

I still have some of the yarn a co worker and I bought from one of the women clothing designers we subleased a space from. She was a woman of advanced yarn taste - gorgeous leftover balls of yarns from france and switzerland in beauteous colors, egads.

I made several vests with the mixed yarns. I suppose I should take photos of the ones I have left.. The lucky bit was that there were some yarns that had enough for a basic underlying color for the to-be knitted vest. And, ya know, nothin' like a little mohair woven in at the shoulders..

We each got a whole load of yarn for something like $20.00. Not nothing, but very worth it. I made a sweater, alas, for my husband that turned out to possibly fit a gorilla. Oh, well, I tried..

And it's the thought that counts, osso.
You tried.
So it wasn't a complete waste, was it?