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.