Valerean

The two baskets I thrifted last week look pretty clean (and I'm careful about checking out what I want before I buy), but I still like to give them a clean before I use them. Both are made of natural fibers (wood and rattan) so it's not a good idea to get them wet or immerse them in any manner. First I spray a towel with Lysol cleaner and wipe them down inside and out to remove any dirt. Although the baskets don't smell, I still spray them with disinfectant spray and let them sit out in the sun for a day or two. After that they should be fine to use. I might line them with fabric or just use as they are. When you're thrifting baskets condition is everything. Along with how clean the basket looks check out how sturdy it is. You may find a few broken pieces (my rectangular basket had one small broken piece inside) but if they don't make the basket rickety you can trim any jagged ends with scissors (for thicker materials, tin snips work well.) One t...

Since I've learned it's almost impossible not to spend money (although I'm still trying to avoid that whenever I can), I'm changing my tactics to spend as little as possible. Since food is our biggest expense every month, I'm competitively shopping at three different supermarkets and beefing up my emergency pantry. The latter I need to do anyway in preparation for hurricane season, but it helps. I cook at home nearly every night now, and make judicious use of leftovers. We eat well, although beef is out of my budget for the most part. My guy and our nephew eat about twice the amount of food I do, so I'm cooking recipes for basically five. By avoiding convenience foods and purchasing whole foods instead I'm spending about $130.00 or less per week at the market, keeping us at about $500.00 per month for food. I am thrifting or buying at the dollar store everything I can these days: books, cleaners, clothes, certain foods (when they're cheaper...

How lucky have I been with my thrifts lately? These Women's Sketchers D'Lites Fresh Start sneakers are wide fit, my size, in white (the color I most like for sneakers) and almost brand new; from the faint soiling on the soles they must have been worn once and returned to the store. They retail for $75.00; I paid $8.99. This miniature kit was an open box, but happily included all the parts to make it. The kit retails for $21.79; I thrifted it for $12.99. My small lot of yarn included multiples of I love this yarn in white, gold and chestnut, which alone retail for $4.99 a skein. Altogether the lot totals $61.15 retail; I got it for $8.99. Bottom line: when you can get $157.94 worth of goods for just $30.97 it's always great luck. :)

I'm mostly posting about my thrifts over on the crochet blog, but since I've been having a lot of good luck with thrifting at the online auction lately I thought I'd do a post here. My old walking Sketchers are starting to wear thin at the soles, so I found this pair of Women's Sketchers D'Lites Fresh Start. This small lot of yarn included multiples in three colors, which I'm always on the lookout for these days. Aside from the variegated skein, the color palette of this lot is perfect for a bucket list crochet project I'm hoping to make this year. I regularly search for miniature kits as gifts for a family member who loves them, and this one was an open box but contained everything needed to make the little house. Stop by tomorrow to see what everything is worth, and how much I saved by thrifting them.

While wandering last week my guy and I stopped by Goodwill in Oxford , which is part of The Villages. This was only our second visit to the store, and this time I got some pics. This is one of Goodwill's superstores, with over 15,000 square feet of new and used merchandise. It's a very clean store with lots of unusual offerings. There's a section in the back with bins and racks of mostly new merchandise. I hunted through the bins for yarn on this visit, and also got some household necessities for cheap. I bought this pretty reusable shopping bag for $1.49, which I plan to keep in the car. Because we have pets I use carpet freshener to control the doggie smell. I haven't seen Love My Carpet in ages, and it was $1.99 a bottle. Finally digging through the bins paid off, and I scored a bundle of five skeins for $4.18. Stop by tomorrow to find out what they're worth.

We just picked a bumper crop of Meyer lemons from our tree, enough to share with neighbors and still have all the chicken piccata and lemonade we want. :) I will be juicing and grating the peel from most of what I keep to freeze for cooking and baking the next few months. Since lemons are now about a dollar a piece at the market there much satisfaction in growing and harvesting our own. I think I've also banished all the hateful, lingering demons of depression over 2025's troubles and stresses. It was a terrible year, but I did get through it, and it's over now. I expect there will be more of the same in 2026, but how well I manage them depends on my attitude. The lemons of the new year need to be made into something. To start off on the right note I've created a new blog devoted to my thrifting and crocheting here . Writing about two things I'm passsionate about is fun, and gives me more room to express myself rather than brood over my diminishing abili...

I know I said I was done thrifting for the year, but that was before our utterly inept government made health insurance into a nightmare. Since I've decided to have a no-spend year next year in order to deal with the 148% hike in my premiums, I'm giving myself permission to thrift whatever I want until the end of 2025. Which starts with this interesting lot of yarn in a neat vintage container. That yarn looks pricey to me. I'm currently using a basket to hold skeins for whatever crochet project I'm working on, and the darn thing keeps giving me splinters and snagging the yarn. This metal container will be much better. Stay tuned to the blog to see what it looks like when it arrives. :)

There were a couple of yarn lots I put a minimum bid on in December, but they ended up in bidding wars that knocked me out of the competition. I thought I'd point out why high bidding prices make thrifting as expensive as buying new for retail. This 22 lbs. lot probably has about 50 skeins in it (if you do the math, that's how many would weigh 22 lbs.) They're mostly Red Heart Super Saver skeins, which I like a lot, and retail for $4.99 each, or about $250.00 for 50 of them. It's a lot of yarn, so I only wanted to bid the minimum $15.00 (shipping and handling would have been an extra $22.00.) There were no pics of what was in the box, and it would be a bit of a hassle to store, so that was all I was interested in paying. I was the first bidder but the bidding war began almost immediately, and the winning bid was $77.33. That's probably going to run over a hundred dollars with shipping, which is $2.00 a skein. Here's a slightly smaller lot of yar...

I needed a couple more colors of yarn for future projects, but bidding on yarn lots at the thrift auction has been fierce lately. So I looked around for a lot that I was pretty sure none of the other bidders wanted, and found this one: "Large Lot Of Unsorted Yarn + - Tote Not Included ~ Condition: Good - shows some sign of wear- Has surface dirt, a musty smell and other possible imperfections. Unsorted, tote not included." It was over eight pounds of yarn, and the opening bid was $7.99, which is quite cheap. I counted at least fourteen skeins, with possibly more buried under the front yarns. Of course dirt and smell are never desirable qualities when it comes to yarn, and some of the yarn was obviously in a tangle, so no one had bid on it since it had been listed. Because I know how to launder skeins of yarn before I use them, and untangling yarn is something I like to do as physical therapy, and it had the colors I wanted, I put in a max bid of $8.00. As you ca...

The last of the three yarn lots I won at the thrift auction arrived in a gigantic box; it actually did weigh 17 lbs. Let's see what treasures are inside. I guessed there would be 30 skeins; I got 34, and all of them are in new/unused or excellent condition. These are mostly worsted weight (the yarn I use most often) and some sport/baby weight. They're perfectly clean and have no smell, too. From the variety, colors and condition I'd say this was someone's stash. I also received a couple of pieces of crochet work mixed in; likely from the original owner. I'll try to do something fun with these. The yarn is so clean it could have come from a store shelf, so I have no problem giving each skein a resale value of $5.00, for a total of $170.00. I paid $9.99 for the entire lot. My three yarn lots have provided me with all the skeins and colors I need for my winter projects. I guessed that from the three combined I would end up with 74 skeins of yarn wo...

Last Saturday my guy and I visited Winter Garden for their weekly farmer's market. It was super crowded, so I wasn't able to take many pictures. When we got home a surprise was waiting on my doorstep: the 6.6 lb. tub lot that was hard to estimate due to the fuzzy pictures on the original auction listing. I guessed there would be 35 skeins, and it turned out there are 37 skeins altogether. Most are unused and in very good condition. That includes 16 skeins of vintage fingering weight Bucilla Wondersheen cotton yarn (discontinued in 1952, so it's at least 73 years old) that are absolutely gorgeous. It's definitely worth at least $185.00; perhaps more with the rare vintage yarn being so hard to find these days. I paid $7.99 for the lot, or about twenty-two cents per skein.

Calculating the value of three lots of yarn I just won for less than $28.00 altogether before they arrive here is one of the games I play with things I thrift online. The yarn I thrift is for my personal use, not for resale. I also set limits on my bidding, so it's not about what I think the yarn is worth, but rather what I'm willing to pay for that much yarn. I can estimate in advance the total number of skeins, and if they have labels I can usually track down the current price if I'm unsure of the value. If they are unlabeled, I generally assign a resale price of $3.00 to $5.00, depending on condition and size I see. This 6.6 tub lot was a bit hard to estimate due to the fuzzy pictures on the original auction listing, and the way they partially unloaded the tub as they took the pics. I also think the weight is wrong. I guessed about 35 skeins, worth at least $105.00. I paid $7.99. This 3 lb. lot is easy to count: I saw nine skeins of white yarn. Just t...

Yes, I'm doubling up on posts again to stop myself from pre-publishing ahead of my one-week limit for the blog. I am trying not to be so OCD! Ha. I saw this unfinished quilt top at the thrift auction, and the apple applique pattern is one from a magazine that I made in the past (26 years ago, in fact.) I gave my quilt as a gift to a kindergarten teacher, but I've always wanted one for myself. If I win this for my $9.00 max bid I can make it again with a lovely head start. :) Something about this Asian scarf caught my attention. It looks like an import, and the fabric appear to be cheap synthetics, but the colors are beautiful. Much of the quilting I did early on when I started was in Asian fabrics, but again I gave everything away. I put in a bid of $5.00 for it in fond remembrance of the quilter I once was. I made a Let It Snow mini quilt out of Fabscrap scraps a few years back and gave it to a friend. I'd like to have one for myself, because if I can ...

I doubt I'll be able to beat this bargain in the next two weeks, so I'm calling these two pair of pants my thrift of the month. The light sweat pants are Calvin Klein, and the black dress pants are Avenue, and both are new with tags. As you can see from the tag the sweat pants retailed for $59.50. The dress pants originally went for $42.00. I like to wear sweat pants in winter when I walk the dogs, and that was the original reason I was willing to bid $7.99 for this lot. I also liked the one-cent shipping they were offering. I had no challengers and won them for that price. Along with the one-cent shipping, tax and handling the lot cost me a grand total of $10.14. Together they retailed for $101.50. Savings: $91.36. Thrift your clothes, my friends.

While looking for backing fabric for the Halloween quilt I visited The Old Packing House , my favorite antique place in central Florida. When you walk in and turn left you'll find a wonderful section of in-new-condition fabrics of all shades and colors (mostly prints.) I got lucky, I was able to find the fabrics I needed for the rest of my Halloween projects and fall/Thanksgiving projects. The things I like at The Old Packing House are really reasonably priced, so I also found some charming handmade decor pieces I can use for Halloween, and a gift for my favorite person. I couldn't resist this little Halloween quilt, either. One final, fabulous find was a bag of 25 vintage handkerchiefs. I use these for stitch practice -- and I just ran out -- so I'm thrilled to have them. By supporting local antique sellers and artists I'm able to put my money directly back into the community, which is the greatest bonus. I don't need a Michael's o...