Live Cheap and Large at Garage Sales!
What I look for first are estate sales.
Usually these are indoors; the contents, or most of the contents, of a house are being sold because the owner has died (or possibly gone to a nursing home). Estate sales vary a lot. They can be good for practical items. Band-Aids cost a fortune at the store; the ones at the estate sale are still sealed in their little paper packets, and they’re perfectly clean. Often there are cleaning supplies for sale. And there can be lots of whatever the person collected, whether it be tools, plastic ware, needlework kits, jewelry, or figurines. There may be notepaper, envelopes, good paper for your paper-hungry printer. School supplies, so in September you won’t be paying full price for rulers, protractors, pencils. Estate sales are as various as the people who left the house, but if you’re looking for paper clips and staples, and the other shoppers are looking for antique china, you’ve got the field to yourself, and the prices are low. Estate sales are also the place to buy walkers, canes, toilet risers, and shower benches, if you have relatives who need them.
(No, you are not going to pass on germs. You are going to wash the things you buy. If you use it and get it dirty, you wash it and it’s clean, right? What makes you think that your cleaning powers will suddenly fail just because someone else sat on that bench or wore those socks? Once you wash something with whatever brand of detergent or kind of cleaner you usually use, it becomes yours. It even smells right, like your stuff and your house.)
Next, I like rummage sales run by a church or other nonprofit organization.
All the stuff is donated, and the prices are low. And your money goes to a good cause. What I like to buy is those silly little things you wouldn’t pay full price for, but they’re fun. Like a coin counter, or one of those things that squashes a hard-boiled egg into a cube. And plastic ware. I have one handy shape of Tupperware that I buy if it’s in good shape. Found another one today for a quarter.
Then there are the miscellaneous garage and yard sales where you can find anything or nothing.
You might find a pair of earrings or a whole wardrobe for your toddler. I’ve bought lots of kids’ clothes, and one of my favorite sweatshirts came from a garage sale. Almost all of my pots and pans have come from garage and rummage sales. (They match, too.) If there’s a small appliance you’d like, but you’re not sure how useful it will be, why pay twenty or thirty dollars at the store, when you can get it for five or ten at a garage sale? If you really love it, you can keep it, or even replace it with a fancier model. If not, you haven’t wasted as much money.
Today, halfway through writing this article, I went garage saling. As we left one sale, I said to my husband, “If that 4-cup coffee maker had been $5.00 instead of $8.00, I would have grabbed it.” Two sales later, there was a 4-cup coffee maker for $5.00! Okay, such serendipity doesn’t happen every day, but it sure is nice when it does!
Decorations for holidays and seasons are so readily available that it seems a shame to buy them anywhere else. Christmas wreaths, Thanksgiving centerpieces, summer door decor – what you want will eventually show up. If you prefer to make your own, you’ll eventually run into a sale (the ad in the paper may mention “craft items”) with dozens of how-to books, maybe some kits, and tons and tons of craft supplies. Why pay mucho dollars to try out a new craft you’re not sure you’ll like? Try it cheap; the expensive stuff will still be there after you’ve practiced on the garage sale stuff.
While you’re thinking about holidays, if you don’t have the kids with you, this is a good time for Christmas and birthday shopping. Bright, shiny toys abound, and kids aren’t going to try to return anything. As for adults, you know your friends and family. Some want a receipt, but a lot of people love an antique plate or pitcher, and you can’t go out to K-Mart and get one.
Gas, you may have noticed, isn’t free. That’s what makes a neighborhood garage sale s so handy in nice weather. You can park your car and do a bunch of sales on foot. If you’re driving all the way, you need a planned route, covering as many sales as you want to visit in as few miles as you can. (You might go with friends and split the gas.)
Here’s a very personal and idiosyncratic list of things I have bought at estate. rummage, and garage sales:
Clothes for the whole family. If I were thinner, and if my feet were less funny-shaped, I could buy more.
Household supplies: bandaids, light bulbs, unopened boxes of facial tissue, candles (even little birthday candles), Christmas cards.
China and glassware: Got a dinner service for eight at one sale and a service for four at another, that were so alike I thought they were the same pattern till after I’d used them a couple of times. None of my guests noticed, either.
Small appliances and kitchen tools: toasters, food processor, spatulas, springform pans, casserole dishes, cookie sheets, cookie presses, electric skillets.
Office supplies: folders, hanging files, notebooks, envelopes, pens, pencils and erasers, rulers, paper clips, pens, desk organizers.
Just for pretty: little boxes, little coin purses, necklaces and bracelets, miniatures, little shelves to hold the miniatures, pretty plates for the wall, Chinese vases for the mantel.
Holiday and seasonal: Christmas glasses, painted plaster Easter eggs with bunnies on them, an autumn centerpiece, a flowery spring hat for the front door.
Sick time: a wheelchair for my husband’s mother, and various sickroom equipment for her and later for my father.
Miscellaneous: Oh, everything! Tablecloths and napkins, washcloths, guest towels, and pretty soaps. We pick up cookbooks, decorating books, recent magazines, and stuff to sell on eBay. Right now I’m looking for a yardstick, a tape measure, a summer door decoration that I like better than what I have, and a bunch of other things that I’ll remember if I ever find my list. The coffee maker needs to be crossed off, as do the 25Ã?¢ apiece damask napkins I bought last week for the holidays.
It’s fun. It’s cheap. You feel rich, and clever, and generally pleased with yourself, and you come back with bags of stuff for less than you’d spend on one blouse at the mall. Enjoy!
