Thank You For Your Garage Sales, Spring Cleaners

I love the springtime and the spring cleaning it evokes. I love that spring cleaning yields the occasional garage sale. I love garage sales, and even more, I love the occasional organized neighborhood sale. No IKEA or Pottery Barn or fancy-pants Anthropologie castoffs this year (which yes, I’ve been lucky enough to snatch previous years), but I did obtain some exceptional goodies at the Biennial Ultimate Garage Sale in the Browncroft neighborhood of Rochester. If anyone from that neighborhood follows my blog and recognizes these from your sale… thank you. And sorry for the haggling.

Self-control (and fear of bedbugs) in full-effect while I peruse people’s junk, I don’t often carry home trashed items or buy things just for the sake of buying. And I don’t purchase bedding at garage sales, or clothing for that matter, but I am a sucker for home improvement and decor items. Last time I visited this particular neighborhood sale, I scored the paned glass door that ended up being installed between my living room and sunroom. For $2.

My investment this year totalled $4, but I acquired some items that I really like (and will use). True to form, here’s what I found and what I paid (Sorry sister, I know my price outlines drive you insane):

1. A ragged out owl statue. Heavy. Will be painted a neutral color. 50 cents.

2. Glass amber vase. 25 cents. This will go nicely with the golds and yellows in the house. Haggled.

3. Brass heart bowl. Needs a good cleaning but I am sort of liking the tarnished look. Nice for a candle, is what I’m thinking. 25 cents.

And I realized after I took that photo that you probably wouldn’t have any perspective on the size of these goodies, so I stuck my standard Venti Starbucks cup in the background.

4. I’m also a sucker for candles, mostly because the ones you find at garage sales were used once or twice and still have adequate burn left in them. People practically give away candles… and I practically never buy them retail, even when I’m tempted by the Pier 1 “oh, this votive is just 79-cents and it smells SO good” urge to buy. Since I burned through my supply over the course of the winter (pun noticed, not intended), it’s time to stock up where I can, and the ones included in this set were only $1 and didn’t smell bad at all (most were actually unscented) so I took the whole pack. And the big one is grape. I love grape.

5 and 6 and 7. At the last house I stopped at, I found more candles (unscented and lightly used) and this beautifully shaped glass jar for $2 total. The pink thumbtacks were in someone’s freebie bin; I couldn’t not get them.

Yep, $4. Reasonably good finds for an otherwise cost-free excursion. Anyone else have an exceptional weekend picking through other people’s cast away decor?

Still on my list for summer finds are: books (I found some on this hunt but I just couldn’t weigh myself down as I walked around for hours), large planters for gardening on the back deck, a big lampshade (or a full lamp) that I can take apart for a future project, and some christmas ornaments (because I like an assortment of random ones for tree, including well-made and ornate vintage designs). And yeah, I’ll probably pick up more candles if I find any.