December 9, 2012

Even More Estate Saling





Often on a Saturday morning, we are off with the GPS to see what we can find at local estate sales.  In years past, we would have enthusiastically bought things for our shops.  These days, we voyeuristically waft our way through other’s homes day dreaming, window shopping, and enjoying ourselves.

Occasionally we buy something.  Yesterday, in a tidy home above the ocean, I passed on a lovely large Kitchen Aid mixer for a hundred bucks that would have beat with a stronger pulse than my 1938 Sunbeam Mixmaster.  Swedish influences mixed with mid-century modern struck a good juxtaposition with the big windows overlooking the ocean.  I, the fabric whore, passed on the acre of lovely white laces to bring home a delightful, tan lidded casserole from the early fifties.

Other homes were not such kind ones reflecting a different view of their owners.  Again I passed on a stronger mixer so overwhelmed was I by the quantity of things left behind.  In one home, boxes of sweaters had over crowded one bedroom filling one closet floor to ceiling and catching all the dust bunnies under the bed, under the dressers, and spilling out into the hall.  At another house, there were Christmas decorations fighting for space with Victoriana in every tiny room spilling over into the back yard and rental home to the rear in a cacophonous, dusty mess.  Such obsessions so overcrowded what is left of my mind that I couldn’t consider buying a single thing.

I came home determined to get rid of more of my own belongings.  Somehow.  My problem is the same as there’s; I love what I have.


  • Keeping those on the east coast in my thoughts.
  • Himself:  Had fun at the sales, napped well, and was the talking star at the Automotive Museum.  Slept in this morning.
  • Herself:  Not only did I let some skinny brown kid steal a bag of popcorn out from under my nose, I became aware that I can no longer put faces with belongings.  I shan’t do that job again….double darn it.  Probably had another TIA or two this year, and my growing loss of short term memory just confirms this.
  • Reading:  Still wandering in WWI.
  • Balance:  Yesterday’s nap was a success.

7 comments:

  1. I hate memory loss. Both hubby and I fight it often. No TIA's unless they are so very tiny.

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  2. Sometimes the contents of the estate sales are overwhelming. Drives me home to pack up more and dispose of it as well. Good for you.

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  3. I do love estate sales, but no longer have room to store what I find. This is where you can find those little hidden treasures though and that's the fun part.

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  4. One ought to have a rule that for every extra thing one acquires one gets rid of an equal amount.
    If only!

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  5. Gosh I have never been to a yard sale that I can remember, and was shocked by what I found at various estate sales.

    After his wife left him, one of my neighbors sold his house and cleaned out the basement as part of his moving day project. He placed hundreds of adding machines at the curb for county pickup. Then he drove around the corner too fast and some of the junk he was hauling away to the dump spilled onto the hood of our station wagon and damaged it.

    He moved to California after that and became a born-agian Christian.

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  6. I had that little portable washing machine when I had my first and only child....loved it....

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