Friday, August 19, 2011

Clothes and wine

Today we started dealing with our clothes.

This is really quite a task that will task some time in the long run, but today I forced my older 2 kids to deal with what was in their room. First, they went through everything they had: they had to neatly fold and put back all of the clothes that fit them that they would definitely wear, and the rest got sorted. Some will go into a donation bin, some will be passed onto friends that can use them, and the rest will go to a consignment shop. I certainly am not out to make money off of my kids old clothes (even though that sounds nice), but some of the really nice stuff could be recirculated in the community and I have a friend who owns a kids consignment shop so I love the idea of supporting her and her local business.
And while I was at it, I grabbed our nice wooden dollhouse that we've had forever and took that along to resell. That is one thing that I would really like to see someone pick up and continue to love - I remember years ago when my daughter was little and I was playing around with the single mom status and money was so super tight - I really splurged to buy her the doll house and (slowly) furniture and dolls to go with it. But now she is too big for it and my youngest rarely plays with it so I really want to see it find a good home.
(If you looking for a wooden dollhouse, stop by and buy it in the Great Barrington location...)

Anyhow, after dropping all of that off, we headed to the Purple Barn for some second hand clothes buying... in the spirit of back to school shopping.
Not only did we score some great stuff, we did it without spending more that $30. Check out the loot:

I found some awesome Pumas for my 4 years old, as well as some much needed rain boots and some slippers. I also found him a nice button up, a sweater and 2 pairs of pants. My oldest got some nice DC flip flops and a cool shirt - he really wanted a purple suit for his halloween costume and was bummed to not find one (I warned him that he probably wouldn't find one). My daughter found a few shirts and a nice zip up sweatshirt. And as a bonus, I found my partner a nice button up shirt.

I am really loving second hand shopping, it's becoming very satisfying and we can almost always find whatever we need without contributing to the over consumption of purchasing new products. It's the perfect solution really.




And then we came home and ate a snack.

This was some hummus that I made from scratch and some yogurt dill dip that I concocted from the batch of yogurt that I made yesterday, served with some fresh local veggies.

Mmmm.






 And then I poured myself a glass of local wine.

See, last night I sort of rescued someone's dog and today they delivered a bottle of wine to the co-op for me - and I was super please that it was local... like they knew me or something.

The dog story is no biggie - somehow a standard poodle puppy ended up in our store and I took care of it until I could I deliver it to the police station in some crazy downpour thunder storm. It just so happened that when I was at the police station, the owner of the dog showed up hoping that someone had reported their dog... she was so happy to know that her dog was in my car.

It is so nice when things fall in place like that. And considering the day that I had struggled through yesterday, it certainly felt good to make someone happy like that.

And if you are out there, owner of Roxy the poodle - thank you so much for the wine. It totally hit the spot.

1 comment:

  1. Those are some great scores!

    I pass some things on, but admittedly, I am a huge fan of the consignment sale/shop concept. Really I just love moving that stuff out of our house as soon as it no longer fits. Whatever I sell, I usually put the profit right back into the store, or use the money to buy second hand elsewhere. Clothes are hit or miss. So many clothes aren't made well and really don't last beyond one or two seasons of wear. Maybe it's because often I buy the cheap stuff at Target or Kohls, but it could be because Evan is pretty rough on clothes. When I score shirts at Old Navy on clearance (recently found a bunch for $2.59 each!) I do find they last longer and can be passed down or sold.

    I love second hand games, toys and books. At our local consignment sale, I got Connect Four and a Spirograph for $1 each. Also, for Evan I got 4 nice Gap non-logo fleece pullovers for $2 each, and some awesome black velour Puma track pants for $3. Couldn't pass those up. I sold our glider chair for $50, plus about 20 pieces of clothing and half a dozen toys. I definitely came out ahead!

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