The ultimate in recycling

As we continue to fill our landfills more quickly than new ones can be created, it's worth looking at how green it is to market antiques and collectibles. What could be more wise than to reuse an object, rather than to discard something to a garbage bin and purchase a new one to replace it?

This is more than clever marketing - this is about reducing our production of refuse in our world. If we encourage people to buy gently used glassware, linens, clothing, dishes, and decorative objects, we are preventing those very objects from becoming fodder for the overburdened landfills. It makes huge sense.

I often speak of the treasures that we find at garage sales, estate sales, and auctions. We also have things just outright given to us to resell - and these things would not otherwise be used. We aid in finding these items their new lives in peoples' homes. Buying used items means that you're not contributing to the mindless cycle of always buying new, and discarding your old, things. You're breaking that cycle - interrupting it - and also extending the life of an object by enjoying it for many years, before in turn, sending it on to another home yourself. And likewise, when you're done with enjoying something in your home, think about donating it to a charity shop, gifting it to someone else in your family if it's a precious heirloom, or have a sale of your own, instead of putting it in the garbage. Just because you're done using it doesn't mean someone else won't get years of enjoyment from it - if anything, it's kind of wonderful to think of the extension of life it will get by being passed on to another household.

It's another way, however small, to green your small corner of the world.

A new look (template)

I've changed a few page elements and so thought I would freshen things up a bit overall with a new template.

We're getting ready this week, after a bit of a break, for the Sun, Sand and Swing celebration right in our own backyard here in Treasure Island. It's only a mile away from home - what a treat! And so we're shaking things up as far as what we're bringing to the show. We're debuting a $5 table, with selections taken from our original inventory of items that came with the purchase of the business. Something for everyone, we believe. I'll be making up an eye-catching sign for the table to help draw attention to it.

In preparation for this weekend we had the chance to really go through most of our inventory - several hours worth of work, but very satisfying as there were odds and ends that were in bins that we had forgotten about; so they'll get to see the light of day again. It's interesting to take a fresh look at these things given our accumulated experience of having done a few months' worth of shows, and having gone to estate sales, and auctions. It really helps you see what you have with new eyes - sometimes more discriminating, and sometimes with more appreciation.

What we're surprised about at the moment is the number of garage sales in the area at any given time. There hasn't been a weekend when there wasn't an enormous choice of sales, whether they were church rummage sales, community sales, multi family sales, estate sales run by professional appraisers, or people who just dragged all their contents of their garage out to the front lawn and stuck a sign on to a telephone pole with some duct tape. You can always find a good 10 to 15 sales going on within several miles of where we live. We've never had to go beyond our county limits.

A lot of it has to do with where we live, geographically. You can hold garage sales year-round, unless there's a hurricane bearing down on us. No danger of being frozen out, or often, in this years-long siege of drought that we've been in, rained out. So we don't have a season when people are clearing out their homes - it's more of a perpetual happening. I've already done my haranguing about the garbage versus garage sales that goes on, but I'm thinking that's a cultural happening that I just hadn't been exposed to before. Kind of in the same department as the guy next door who you never see wearing a shirt, and you wished to god that you could cover him up, because it's not a Chippendale moment when you lay your eyes upon him! It's just what some people do, put it all out there, because, well, they can. It's a free country, ain't it?

Garage Sales and GPS

We've spent the weekend going to the many garage sales in the immediate area, to stock up on the particular things that we need (colored glassware, teacups, and animal figurines - go figure!). Around here and during this time of year, the newspapers publish a garage sale map every weekend of the county, with the Saturday, Sunday, and both days' sales clearly marked on the map.

Armed with our TomTom - perhaps Bob's most favorite Christmas present of recent years - getting from house to house without a hassle is all but guaranteed. You do need to type in your next destination before you leave your last, or at least I do, risking getting car sick and getting confusing commands from the calm voice of the unit, as it tells you to "turn around as soon as possible." And there are times when the thing just seems as lost as WE are. But overall, it's removed the stress from figuring out which way the one-way streets are going, and how to most efficiently get from one place to the next.

All I can say is - thank goodness for that gadget, because the garage sales themselves are really hard work to go to. In many ways I have to equate it to dumpster diving, because people will put broken and filthy items out for sale that aren't even suitable for donation to a charity. I don't know how people get the nerve to do it (I even saw, at one garage sale, a package of feminine yeast infection OTC remedy - what on earth?) - is it desperation, stupidity, or what I've come to think of that Jerry Springer mentality, where people don't seem to mind that they are literally airing their dirty laundry for the sake of a couple of dollars? Got me, but I felt slightly sickened at what I saw at some of these sales.

We did pick up one bad find this morning, at what had been signed as an "estate sale" outside of a double-wide trailer. It looked like tables of stuff that had been left outside for weeks, if not months - covered with dirt and grime. We found a lovely teacup and saucer, and negotiated down to what we thought was a fair price. It wasn't until we got it home and gave it a good wash that we saw that the underside of the saucer had a chip out of it. Darn! Condition is king in this business, so although it's still a very pretty piece, it's not worth very much at all because of that chip. So we've got to be more careful, and feel the edges of what we're proposing to buy.

Also picked up this weekend: several pieces of jewelry, a German beer stein, an owl ceramic bank (looking very 1970's), a brass owl trivet, and some amber glass tumblers and dessert glasses. We were pretty careful to stick to our shopping list, as we could have easily come home with plates, books, and other things - but I'm guessing that it makes sense to be firm in sticking to what we know we need, rather than buying what catches our eye.

This definitely is almost as hard work as doing the shows - it's a lot of driving around, and for every garage sale where we find one item, we'll have stopped at four or more that will have absolutely nothing for us. But these are the right places for us to look for our stock. We also struck out early this morning to check out the 49er Flea Market in Clearwater, Florida, which some dealers had recommended to us as a source for inventory. It opened at (yawn!) 7AM, but, as the season really is over for this area, most of the outdoor stalls were empty; many local dealers have probably started doing the shows farther north by now, where the weather is cooler. Many people travel north during the spring and summer, coming back down to Florida for the winter months.

We didn't buy a single thing there. It's not that there weren't items to buy - but the prices certainly weren't as low as I thought they would have been, even given the bargaining that you're expected to do at flea markets. And actually, nobody was selling what I had on my shopping list - no colored glassware, no (suitable) animal figurines, but ones that I would not have wanted in our booth. Not a single teacup to be seen. The jewelry was not as contemporary as the pieces that I like to sell - more of the Old Lady stuff that just doesn't interest me. So again I'm glad that we stuck to our guns and passed on the impulse shopping.

We'll probably be doing the same next weekend - we'll see how the sale-ing goes then!