Thrifty

I love garage sales and I love thrift stores. Hell, I love garbage day in the right neighbourhood.

This post starts because I went to one of my regular church stores Wednesday at lunch. Almost didn't go, because I'm trying to be thrifty, and believe it or not, you can spend a lot of money doing church stores and garage saling.

Anyway, this week was a coup for thrift purchases.

I have been looking fo a new robe for years. A new, not too girly, yet still very soft, but not flannel, robe. For years. And I haven't had a robe at all since Christmas 2004, when I gave my robe to Mike.*

So on the day I just cannot resist my urges to look through other people's crap and cast-offs, I find the very thing I have been waiting for.

And a Scottish bag made of stiff netting. What else would a good Scottish bag be made of, I ask you? I add it to the 50 other bags I have.





In the garage sale category, we have this winner. Not the desk, which was lovingly saved from the garbage by my intrepid Grs, and then passed along to me when twins necessitated a laundry station rather than the gold wonder. Please also note the Hallowe'en pumpkin eyes glowering about on bendy-straw technology and lurking behind the phone, also given to me by my Grs.

No, I guide your eyes to the lamp on the right hand corner of my desk. I have also been looking for a lamp for my desk for ages. Not years, only months, but I use this lamp more than that robe. (Though we'll see once that robe gets washed. I may use them together pretty consistently.)

It is possible that Aaron McKenzie Fraser is my new good luck charm. I ran into him last Saturday morning and mentioned that I had already been at a garage sale looking for a lamp, but that it was a terrible garage sale with no lamps at all.

We part ways, I go off to pick up what does not turn out to be a love letter sent by registered mail, but notice of a rent increase. (There are few things more depressing than opening up notice of a rent increase at the Bell St Sev while watching people buy aged chimichangas at 10.20 am, when really, one was secretly hoping for a love letter.) On my way to the letter pick-up, I passed by a garage sale at the Legion on Kent St. Meh, I thought, probably nothing, but why not. Isn't this lamp the first thing I saw? I paid $2 for it, plus a teapot and two mugs. Sweet.

Last but not least: garbage.

This picture actually comprises the Four Categories of Scavenging. The record player, sadly broken, was left behind by the people who used to live in my apartment. The Underwood on the far left, I bought at a garage sale in Toronto. The Underwood on the far right was bought at a church thrift store in Stouffville. The portable Smith Corona Corsair next to it is from a now-forgotten thrift store here. Last, but not least, I found the old card file under the Royal (bought at General Typewriter, not scavenged) in the garbage of the rooming house across the street from me.

It's empty, as I haven't yet figured out what else I need to file. But there's something, I'm sure. The things in my house sorted according to the FCS? X-ref by place of purchase?

*We weren't giving each other presents that we'd bought. So I washed and pressed the bathrobe he kept stealing from me, then wrapped and proffered it up.