cleaning up the treaures

So if there is any downside to yard saling, it has to be that in order to get your stuff so cheap, some of it may be in yucky condition. For example, I purchased an awesome leather tool belt (for use in future yard sales, of course....did I already mention this here?) for $1. It has many compartments and can be very useful; it is just in really poor shape. Dirty, misshapen leather, etc. You spend a lot of time cleaning/rehabbing your items, but I don't mind this part. It is nice to take something that hasn't seen any love and revitalize it.

This is also the stance we take concerning estate sales. It is disheartening and quite sad to walk into someone's home (usually an elderly person), with all their worldy possessions on sale. Often, the owner has passed away, or sometimes they are taken into nursing homes. Samantha and I went to one in which we believe the owner was acting as cashier. Nancy and I went to one in which the woman's husband had died and she couldn't bear looking at belongings without him (actually, that was the one that I got the toolbelt).

The home of an estate sale usually smells like the windows haven't been open in some time. It is musty, dusty, and usually decorated 50s-80s style. One can't help but wonder, as you walk on the shag carpeting (there is ALWAYS shag carpeting), "Is this how my treasures will end up? Will my children be so bewildered by my treasures (and why I considered them treasures) that they will just give up and invite strangers into my house to purchase my soap dishes for a quarter?" When someone dies, they leave behind stuff. No two ways about it. It is a question of what to do with that stuff. Some elderly people (both my grandmothers, for example), sense their time is coming and begin to give away their belongings in the preceding years of their death. Some people do not, either because their advanced age caught up to them, their passing was sudden, or they couldn't bear to part with their belongings. In any case, it is depressing.

However, we (Nancy, Samantha, and I) have assuaged our sometime-guilt with the thinking, "By purchasing this elderly person's treasures, we are ensuring they will live on in our homes. We will clean them, use them, and honor them." That is really the only way to make an estate sale palatable; otherwise it is just too darn sad.

The enclosed picture is just such an estate sale purchase from a woman who had recently died. The turquiose chair has brass nails on the arms in which the paint had flaked off. I brought it home, cleaned the upholstery, and painted the nailheads. This is the result.