Good Luck Holds (Majorly)

Since I had good luck thrifting a lot of pants I decided to watch for one more. My criteria: I prefer black, blue or dark color pants, I didn't want to spend a bundle, and I wanted them new with tags if possible. A lot of ten pair of pants did come up that fit my first two needs, and most looked like they still had tags. What clinched the deal for me: it was an only buy-it-now lot with a very reasonable shipping charge. So I bought it.

The lot arrived and . . . have mercy.

While I show you this new pair of Calvin Klein suit pants, let me rattle off a few stats. Everything in the lot was new with tags. The ones tagged Talbots and Chicos cost $119.00. Each.

The Calvin Klein pair were $89.00.

I've never been able to afford Vera Wang clothes. I now own a pair of chocolate slimming jeans that retail for $60.00 at Kohls. I also have Hilary Radley, Diane Gilman, Isaac Mizrahi, Lee and Dockers pants. All new with tags. Two pair are a bit too small for me, and one pair I'll have to take in, but the rest are my size. Now take a guess how much all the original tags added up to. Go on. You know you want to.

The retail tags on the ten pants add up together to $595.98. With tax, that would cost me $637.70 to buy them new.

I paid $19.99 for the lot, $9.00 for shipping, and $1.40 in tax, for a grand total of $30.39. Savings: $607.31.

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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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