Better Than a Target Run

I’ve always been a fan of yard sales and thrift stores, but a couple of years ago I discovered something truly marvelous: estate sales.

Are you familiar with estate sales? This isn’t your ordinary yard sale where you’ll find mostly junk and the occasional treasure. An estate sale is when the entire contents of a house is for sale. Like, the door is open and you go into the rooms, the closets, and cupboards. You can buy anything that isn’t nailed down.

I find these sales using EstateSales.net, and there are sales posted in my area every month – sometimes every week. 

Estate sales have taken the palace of Target runs for me. I barely ever use Amazon either.

Gil and I keep a joint running list on our phones of things we are looking for. Buying things this way means that we often have to wait a while before we find it. But if we’re patient, we can find almost anything. Here are a few examples of recent purchases:

Paper shredder
Trifle bowl
Beach towels
Deck box
Shoe organizer
Waffle iron
Dog harness
Mini crock pot
Suitcase & duffle bags
Flatware utensil set (an extra set for hosting large groups = no more plastic forks!)
Whirley Pop Popcorn pan (I was so excited to find this – I had been looking for over a year!)

All of these things were purchased in excellent condition and at a fraction of the original cost. Almost every item in our home was pre-owned, and we have saved thousands of dollars this way.

Plus, it’s fun! Our city has lots of old Victorian homes, so even if I don’t end up buying anything, I enjoy getting a peek into these exquisite houses. 

But there’s one more reason why I’m a fan of shopping this way: Estate sales provide me with a built-in caution against buying things I don’t need.

Walking into someone’s house and examining the contents of their garages and closets feels like an invitation into a sacred space. Most of the time, the owner has passed away or gone to live in assisted care. What I see when I wander their homes are the remnants of a life. I can’t help but wonder about the people that inhabited these spaces. 

Photographs are always removed, so I don’t know the owners’ names or what they look like. But their belongings tell silent stories: This one loved to paint. This one, to knit. This one must have had lots of grandchildren. This one traveled all over the world. This one never got rid of anything, not for fifty years – even down to cleaning supplies and band-aids.

And every time, I ask the walls: Was she happy? 

The boxes and boxes and boxes of holiday decorations – did they see the light of day, or just gather dust in the garage? Do these dozens of purses represent joyful times? Did friends sit around that beautiful oak table, sharing laughter around the multiple serving trays and sets of china? Or do these things only represent optimism – hope that the friends would invite her out, that she would have the courage to invite them in – and then never did? 

Her things look barely used. So I wonder. Did she really live? Or did she die surrounded by stuff, things that brought her dopamine hits in the moment… and nothing more?

As much as I love shopping at estate sales, I am equally sobered by them. What will be in my house when I die? What will my stuff say about my priorities? What stories will it tell about the life I lived, the people I loved?

I am forced to be stern with myself. Am I buying this just because I like it, or because it will have a purpose? Where will I put it? I demand myself to visualize the exact location where I will store it. Do I have room for it, or will it just clutter up my garage? 

I try to be ruthless in my buying decisions. America is the richest country in the world: Four percent of the world’s population, yet thirty percent of the world’s wealth. If everyone on earth lived the lifestyle of Americans, it would take five planet earths to support them all. We produce more trash than any other country in the world. I often wonder: When it’s all over, what will God hold me responsible for? Will I look back on my wealth and my resources and realize I wasted it all on $20 sales at Target?

Buying things used helps me to be a better steward of God’s money. It keeps stuff out of landfills. It reduces the demand for slave-made products from poorer countries. And buying from estate sales keeps me accountable to only buy what I need. Definitely better than Target. 

Related: Swimming in the Stuff of America

Other ways to buy used stuff:

ThredUp
TooGoodToGo
ThriftBooks
OfferUp (Gil has become an expert with this site. We never buy anything without checking OfferUp first. He’s bought all our kids’ sports equipment and all of their shoes this way. He even found four new-ish tires for one car and four hubcaps for another. 

(Friends, listen to me. Please don’t ever buy new small kitchen appliances (think Instant Pot), purses (including designer ones), or exercise equipment. There are literally thousands of these items in like-new condition on used buying sites. I’m often so tempted to go up to a person at Costco with an Instant Pot in her cart and tell her this. But I’m trying hard not to be weird, so I just come home and blog instead.)