Yard Sale Finds
Memorial Day Weekend launches the yard sale season in Vermont. Nels and I went off exploring yesterday morning and found quite a few things.
This typewriter is a highlight. I'm not sure it was used more than once or twice and only cost $5. Lou LOVES it. She already knows how to keyboard, but now she's really *getting* margins, tabs, double spacing, etc. While learning on a computer is fine, there's a place for using a typewriter as well. Her fingers are connecting to what she's doing. It's just like progressing from pencil to pen.
Nels also found something he loves--a huge, heavy mallet for splitting the really tough logs.
I love going to yard sales, but this weekend I really noticed what a throw-away society we have. We saw yard after yard filled with stuff nobody should have bought in the first place. My biggest pet peeve--piles of tossed away plastic kids' furniture that were probably only used for a few months. It made me a sad and more conscious than ever of a world buried in stuff.
OH! I saw so many yard sales yesterday when I slipped away from the farm for a day out to Ithaca...I just wasn't in the right mood for yard sales (maybe the broken toes slowing me down a bit). I just wish I was the happy thrifter that so many others seem to be, after five minutes of browsing I am ready to go.
When I was about ten years old I used to love playing with my dad's typewriter. I had forgotten about this good memory until I saw Lou enjoying her new yard sale find.
We don't get out to yard sales, but we do love to go to the big flea market a few times a year. It is so much fun to wander around the booths looking at all of the treasures.
I wish we had yard sales here in South Africa, it sounds so exciting! There is nothing like finding a bargain...
What a great find. My kids saw a typewriter for the first time last month and got a kick out of it. Then I had to laugh, since it was so common in my lifetime, and they thought it was a treasure!
I love old typewriters and would far rather work on one than with a screen, but you can't get ribbon for them anymore. A few years ago I bought an electronic typewriter for a couple of hundred dollars, only to be told next time I went to buy the cartridge that they didn't sell it anymore! Luckily, they took back the typewriter.
I've been trying to find an old typewriter for my kids but have yet to find one that actually works.
You're so right about the throwaway society we live in. I was reminded of the importance of quality over quantity recently after buying some new clothes for myself. They were trendy but cheap...both in price and quality, and all it took was one washing to ruin them. :(
So true about our throwaway world. I took my ten-year-old to all of the sales in Grand Isle County yesterday and he scored a brand-new board game, never opened or used. It made me wonder how many other toys were in the house that this one was cast aside for 50 cents?
I lOVE yard "sailing"!!!! Holding one though, is another story!
Great finds!!!
How fun! I missed out while traveling! What great finds. I think I have to head out this weekend and see what goodies we can score!
You know I can hardly handle walking into a Dollar Store because like you I feel that 90% of the stuff never should have been made in the first place. Not only the plastic that we are stuck with but the water that it takes to make so much of the junk.
I love what you wrote about the typewriter and the pencil to pen comparison. Cerys has one and loves playing on it.
You are so right about all the stuff no one should have bought (manufactured!)in the first place. I have been slowly cleaning out closets, etc, around my own house and am somewhat dismayed at the stuff that I once thought I "needed." A true lesson. Hopefully we will be more conscious as we go forward.
Love the typewriter, reminds me of all those papers I typed in college! Remember correction tape and white out?