thrifting scores!

It has been awhile since I have blogged about the "light" and "less" part of my blog name. I chose those words to reflect my desire to live with a light step (both my impact on this planet and lightness of soul) and to live with less (clutter, packaging, store bought stuff, fewer expenditures, etc.) One of the many things that I have made less time for as the kids have gotten bigger and we have been homeschooling (which affects my time and energy) has been my regular outings to score used items. I used to hit school/church/garage sales at least once a month, but our needs are less and different (more specific), so recently, our thrifting has been limited to our favorite thrift store and I go to an annual warehouse thrift sale.

Imagine my delight, then, during the past couple of weeks when I re-discovered a used toy store from my youth, visited a recycling "thrift" shop I hadn't been to in awhile, and we found a "free" thrift store not too far from us! I felt elation! (Well, except for that sneaking sense that I am going to have to be careful not to increase the clutter I am trying to purge and that my ability to say "no" with love might have to be honed a bit.)


Above, the "free" thrift shop. The location is part thrift store, part art studio. There is one wall of items for fundraising, but the rest is either "take one item free and choose a donation amount for the rest" or just "free." Below is our haul. The kids have been into puzzles again lately, but I don't want to buy lots. We just don't have space, nor do I want to spend the money. Now I have no guilt donating them again when we are done. All the loot, below, came from the free store. I donated, as well, but (jeez!) that is a Pyrex loaf pan, a whole lot of blank note cards, bamboo knitting needles, and wool yarn! Alone, those items would be around $50 new. I had to reign us in in that store!

Above, these came from the "recycle" shop I hadn't visited in ages. This is a store that is full of random stuff and caters to teachers and artists, who often needs lots of one random item that might otherwise be recycled or thrown in the garbage. For example, not shown are the bottle caps I got for the kids. They had clearly just received a classroom full of microscopes! All of the things, above (those possibly unrecognizable items are tangrams), plus a few more not in the photo were less than $25. Score!

Below are books my mother in law was purging. The Timeline book had been in my Amazon cart "for later!"

 I don't have any photos from our recent visit to our favorite thrift store or the used toy store, but we got some needed clothes for the kids and some Playmobil toys.

I love, too, that it has, paired with summer time, motivated me to start sorting, purging, and reorganizing!