…and of course…

…a heap of books.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been visiting Goodwill and the ReStore a couple of times a week hunting for materials for Hazel’s future play kitchen. I’m hoping it will be her birthday gift in October, and I want to get the big stuff done while I still have a garage to work in. I’ve struck gold with little accessories, but so far, I haven’t found the perfect pieces of furniture to revamp into a toddler-sized sink, range, etc.

I won’t give up!

In the meantime (I’m accumulating lots of other fun stuff and), I was in the ReStore one day and spied that wooden tea crate shoved behind some stuff, full of various building materials. It’s in perfect condition.

“Can I buy that crate?”

“You want…. that crate?”

Um, they are perfect for holding records <— I am turning into my parents.

It was $3.00. I had no cash and they have a minimum purchase for debit cards, so I bought the mint green lamp (also $3.00) that I have been resisting for weeks. That brings my lamp-redo total to THREE. I have three lamps that I need to spruce up. And I don’t actually need three lamps, so that also means that our boring Ikea lamps will probably go to Goodwill when I’m done.

The purse is amazing. It was $3.99. It is so pristine I initially thought it was new, but the clasp looks convincingly like bakelite, there is no tag or marking of any kind anywhere in or on it, and the lining is a satin that definitely looks a little aged, although it’s fully intact.

The mug was a quarter and makes Mikey “feel European”.

A good week :)

…when I can hit three different Goodwill stores in my regular errands & travels. The past four days have been good to me: a pile of books for Hazel; an overstock plate from Target with the “ABs” on it (she picked that one out herself – “ABs!! ABs!!”); toy enamel kitchenware for her that I’d wonder the dating of if it didn’t have Ikea stickers on the bottoms; a Pyrex bowl; a carafe that I’ve already got two of (eek); a little tin bucket for her kitchen utensils (I picked up tiny bamboo forks, spoons, knives, and a mixing spoon in Chinatown in TO for a quarter each); a small piece of fabric; a cheery metal tray and two Fire King mugs.

Parkersburg.

Morgantown.

Clarksburg.

How is it that I can make 17 fruitless thrifting trips in a row and then when it rains, it pours? Is this still spring cleaning? I’m getting really excited about Hazel’s play kitchen plans – I need to start getting to the ReStore a few times a week to look for furniture to hack. The more I think it about it, that seems much more fun than building from scratch.

1.) Maggie and I went thrifting – joy! I bought the $9.00 school desk I’ve been thinking about buying for two weeks. Also found: icons and oldtime music books for Mikey, some yum fabric, a Billie Holiday record, and two glass canisters for treasures. A morning well-spent.

2.) My mom came over so that Mikey and I could simultaneously leave Hazel for the first time. He played a show – it was a must. I’m sure it would have happened sooner than 17 months old if Hazel had spent her first 13 months around her grandparents more than once every few months, and if she hadn’t spent her last three snowed in away from them all the time, but here it is – 17 months old and we’d never been out together alone. Not that we never went out – we just took her everywhere. I don’t know how she would have fared at one month old or five or ten or thirteen… but at seventeen months old she didn’t shed a tear and went to sleep on her Grandma’s shoulder without a fuss. Liberating! The show was really good – lots of people that I love and have missed were there. Who cares if my eyeballs and throat still hurt from the cigarette smoke (3.5 years of smoke-free bars, I’m not used to this).

3.) Lots and lots of time outside in the beautiful weather with my pretty little Bitty.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: The Peace Book
Working on: spotted box; bunnies; custom jewels

I never really got the hang of thrifting in Toronto. I tried, and it just didn’t take. It felt incompatible with living in the city. Now OBVIOUSLY there is not an ounce of truth to that statement, but I just couldn’t get it to work. Any time I would go in a value village or a goodwill there were too many people so I left. Random thrift shops that I’d pop into were usually the way too expensive kind. I didn’t live in a good neighborhood for picking any trash other than my neighbors’ (which I totally did from time to time), and my brain just could not wrap around the notion of church rummage sales in a city because to me, they are such a small town, country thing. I never went to a single one. I would have had to drive half an hour or more to the burbs to hit up yardsales – which I always meant to do but just felt like a huge hassle. On top of all of that, I wanted as little stuff as possible to have to haul back across the border at whatever point in time we decided to leave.

NOW. This is not to say that I have nothing to show for my three and a half years in Canada – I had some great freestore finds and a couple of noteworhty trash finds. I dug through dollar bins of vintage headscarves in subzero weather in Kensington Market. I have a little pile of amazing vintage fabrics that I am saving for Hazel clothing when she’s a little older (so it’ll last longer? so she can run around in it because it’s flowy? I don’t know why)… but I found those in the country last summer. I had my moments, but by and large it was unsuccessful.

And now we are three weeks into my thrifting-every-week resolution and I have struck gold every single week. I love small town thrift shops and goodwills and the thought of springtime rummage sales and yard sailing make me want to run out and buy a pickup truck rightnowrightnow. I have spent less than $25.00 and have come home with things we’ll need when we have our own place (trash-picked furniture, an awesome lamp, some decorative/organizational stuff, old Pyrex for dimes and quarters – we need that right??) and a pile of books for Hazel (a quarter or two each) and craft supplies (several yards of vintage embroidered ribbon for $1.75, ’70s afghan patterns for 35 cents each) and a pristine vintage suitcase ($4.99) packed with clothing and linens for a major repurposing undertaking ($1.29 per pound)… that I am afraid will have to remain a secret for quite a while. And I used a birthday craft store giftcard to buy spraypaint for it alllll… bwahahaha. Not really. But there is nothing that I will not spraypaint.

Why is it so different here? Is it because people have more space to hoard their stuff away for 30 or 40 years before they finally donate it? Because people come and go less? Is it because West Virginia (and I suppose other small town places) are behind the times in general? I never really realized how true that is until we moved away and watched everyone back home discover bubble tea and moccasins and… whatever the reason, man does it feel good to find junk that makes my heart all skippy. I inherited this gene from my grandpa I am sure, the yardsale king himself.

There is also Gabe’s of course – one of the top five reasons I could never live in Canada forever (kidding… kind of). The oasis in the desert of full-priced nonsense, where I can find the perfect bird lampshade for my $3.00 thrift shop lamp, and instead of whatever ridiculous price Urban Outfitters had marked, I pay $3.99. Yes thank you.

I haven’t even checked to see if this lamp works yet. A trip to Lowe’s might be in order. But oh, it’s so happy happy.

(…and there is my third-week-of-the-year destash – a bag to Goodwill equal to the size of the bag I brought home, hmm.)

I also feel the need to mention that I am stripping Hazel’s diapers for the first time. Fifteen months and my first diaper-stripping… not too shabby, but annoying enough that I bought some recommended soap that apparently eliminates the need to ever have to strip your diapers because it doesn’t leave any residue like detergents. I have always assumed that 7th Generation was fine to use on them, but after six months in the same 12 diapers (which are synthetic, not natural cotton or bamboo, so they don’t rinse as well) I can tell they are getting a little bit of detergent buildup. They smell clean when they are clean but not as soon as they are wet, and they aren’t absorbing as well. So after several evenings of researching diaper-stripping-methods I am going at them full-force (and my hands are suffering – should have used rubber gloves), and hopefully the new soap will have arrived by the time I need to do a load of diaper laundry. It might be in vain anyway, because we will still use 7th Generation detergent on everything else so the residue left in the washer from regular laundry might cancel out the nice, fancy powder soap.

Listening: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
(I am) Reading: The Case for Make Believe, new DIY magazine, The Happiest Toddler on the Block (a swaptree swap – I really liked the sleep suggestions in his happiest baby book… it’s hard to find non-cry-it-out advice and I was feeling a little desperate last week)
(Hazel is) Reading: a pile of thrifted books, including stuff about trains, trucks, the alphabet, and houses all around the world
Working on: blue & gold blanket; some Etsy stuff; some Hazel stuff