Best Thrifts of the Year (Non-fabric Edition)

I thought I'd do a couple of posts on the best deals I landed via thrifting over the last ten months. First up is this new with tags padded jacket (my camera wouldn't photograph the color correctly; it's slightly more tawny with an orange tone to it.)

The tag says the original price was $49.90; I paid $9.99 for it at auction. Savings: $39.91

I also thrifted this black and floral Popsugar cropped jacket, new with tags. I only own one jacket which has Mickey Mouse on the back, so I thought it was time I splurged on a couple. I paid $9.99 for this one on auction from ShopGoodwill.com.

The original price of the jacket was $70.00 from Kohl's. Savings: $60.01.

This quilt and sheets on our king size bed are part of a 9-piece set I also got from an auction at ShopGoodwill.com. The set was brand-new when I received it, and came with all nine pieces; it even still had the cardboard inserts in the sheets. The usual retailers don't sell this set anymore online, but I found a listing for the same set (probably used) on Poshmark for $199.00. I paid $37.00 for the set. Savings: $162.00.

The best of my thrifts this year to date was one I never posted about on the blog: this lot of household goods, including two beautiful sharp knives, a full-size sheet set and an expensive mulberry silk pillowcase, for which I paid $16.25. I don't know why I didn't bother with posting about it; maybe because it was just stuff for the house. Everything that came was new and in its original packaging, although I didn't pay much attention to that until I went to hang the four curtains, and noticed they were marked $35.00 each. So long after the lot came, I went back and looked up prices for everything. The total came to $363.30. Savings: $347.05

Image credit: The pic of the household goods lot came from the original auction listing on ShopGoodwill.com.

Comments

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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