Dreaming about thrifting turns into nightmares of hoarding

I have too much time on my hands. Of course, the laundry basket is full, the deep freeze is iced over, the flower beds are full of weeds that came up last spring and are on their second generation of babies, and I have thank-you notes to write from last Christmas. In spite of all those possibilities, I’ve been choosing to watch Facebook and You Tube videos.

As my father always said, “You could lose a crop doing that.” The afternoon hours seem to call me to the “Thrift Shop” visits. People who have made a business out of garage sales and visits to Goodwill are putting out some great “time wasters.”

Not all is pleasant in this obsession. Sometimes they pan down the aisles of the Goodwill stores, focusing in on the best deals. Often these “deals” ring a bell with me. These are the glasses I got for a wedding present back in 1971 and threw out when I needed more room for those plastic mugs back in the early 1990s. I loved them in 1971, but those small black footed glasses looked silly with my more modern dishes. Now, Goodwill will sell them to you for one dollar and you can turn around and sell them on eBay for ten dollars. Or you can tote them to Japan and sell them for twenty dollars each.

The Pyrex bowls with the orange designs around them screamed “old fashioned” back in the 1980s… and yet people are selling them in their booths at the antique shops for good money. I was zooming down the shelves in one Thrift Store video when I caught a glimpse of my toadstool canisters which sat on my cabinet from the early 70s to late 90s when I gave them to the Salvation Army in exchange for some Tupperware that would fit up in the cabinet. I needed room for the microwave oven, the toaster oven, and the slow cooker.

I have given serious thought to becoming a “thrifter” myself. I have a good eye for Fenton vases, German and French figurines, and antiques. I can usually spot what the “host” is going to zero in on before they stop moving down the shelf. I could set up a website on the internet and make some really good money.

That’s what I was thinking, until I came across a one-minute report about a man who had really gotten into the whole “thrifting thing.” He’d started out with a set of aluminum shelves in the corner of his garage. He stacked the items according to their Ebay listings. Items that didn’t sell in three years were “relisted.” That’s when it hit me. “Didn’t sell in three years?”

He’d moved from the one shelf to rows of shelves. The car was moved to a carport beside the house and eventually, the living-room had filled with assorted tubs and boxes waiting to be mailed. Although he was proud of his collection, you got the feeling that he was having to lie to his mother-in-law about all the money he’d made.

He was hoarding. Who am I kidding? I’m afraid if I ever got started, I would also spend more time organizing what I’d “found” instead of keeping books on what I’d “sold.” The people who are making money on these items must be constantly researching, traveling from town to town, and making videos to make themselves feel better about the expense.