Tuesday, April 8, 2008

What will your estate sale be like?

I went out for dinner with Denise tonight. We had a great meal at P.F. Chang's and then for a nightcap we headed to the Office Depot to pick up some book rings for me and to see what kind of badness we could find for our craft stashes.

Somehow during all of this the topic of conversation got around to saving items that might be worth something one day. Which reminded me of a conversation I'd had with my sister about a year ago. She had been to a sale with a particularly large volume of some type of item or another, so much that it had been broken into two sales, and had remarked, "Oh crap, I wonder what MY estate sale will be like!" which totally gave us the sillies thinking about all the strange items we'd squirreled away with some specific purpose in mind.

A year later, this same thought gave Denise and I both the sillies. I had just been telling Denise about this large stack of 1/4" thick industrial felt pads that my sister had rescued from the bottom of some barrel (literally) and my stash of unused medical gauze and tongue depressors. Denise laughed about her stash of picture frames in her garage and her box of dryer lint. What kind of strange individuals might the uninformed outsider think we were?

I suppose it's kind of a take-off on the old "what will people say at your funeral" question, but probably more telling about our quirks and our hoarding habits. So... what will people say about YOUR estate sale? Come on, spill it!

11 comments:

Denise Felton said...

I've already told my daughter that, before she even calls the coroner, she's to notify the YaYas and have them come clean out my studio. I don't want a bunch of strangers wandering around saying, "What do you think she was doing with 500 leather gaskets for archery bows? And what do they have to do with the boxful of used eartags from sheep? And how did she manage to cram 200 used plastic grocery bags under her sink?" Only Yas and AREtsies would understand.

I hope punkinhead reads your post. There's got to be a connection between the memorial roast and the bizarre estate sale.

Julie Anne of Diamondmeenuh Creations said...

Tongue Depressors---- get packets of really cool unsweetened colored Kool-Aid, disolve in a little bit of water, just deep enough to emerse tongue depressor in, soak tongue depressor in Kool-Aid water for a bit, hang on clothes line outside till try. They make EXCELLENT bird toys :-)

My estate sale? Lot's of bits of unidentifiable fabric and a massive tub full of bird toy parts (which are excellent for leveling furniture!). Several dozen jars of pretty colored bird feathers. Oh, and another massive tub of bird toy parts--bigger ones. I wonder what my movers will think......

Yeah, "Crazy Bird Lady"....I'll have to remember to thank them for the compliment :-)

Denise Felton said...

Love the Kool-Aid-dye idea, Julie Anne! And let's hope the movers recognize the toy parts for what they are and don't think up some freakish imagined purpose for them. :)

Janna said...

Reading this post made me laugh out loud! Yeah, Denise, we Ya-ya's know all about your dryer lint...and are even known to save some to help add to your collection. What wierd items do I hoard? Hmmm. Lots of cooking stuff. Any kind of interesting cooking gadget, I must have it. All the usual scrapbooker's stuff. I have a bunch of glass serving stuff, like for having a really cool party and serving stuff on it all over the place, only I've never had a party that used it. I did loan it to my SIL for use at her wedding reception once, but never used it all myself. I should have a party big enough and fancy enough to use all that stuff. And if I don't do that in the next year, then I need to get rid of it. I also have two boxes of all the stuff needed to develop and print black and white photography. And now I pretty much only shoot digital.

Janna said...

Oh yeah, I have another thought to add to this. One day a few years ago, I was snooping in the top drawer of my dad's chest of drawers. I came across about 6 plastic balls that he had somehow pried out of his roll on deodorant bottles. I have no idea what plans he had for those. He is definitely NOT the artsy type. He's just a pack rat. I need to go raid his basement. Somewhere in there used to lurk an old fashioned type writer that I would love to find and use on a few srapbook pages.

Denise Felton said...

Holy carp. Janna, I love your dad! I want the balls out of deodorant bottles now!

I'm a self-conscious and apologetic smoker. So my house is full of those plug-in air fresheners with little bottles of oil in them. At least one in every room. They have to be refilled about once a month, and the refills come sealed with these funky plastic caps shaped kind of like bullets (Airwick) or nipples (Glade). I have a crateful of the caps. They'll be art some day.

Unknown said...

LOL, what a funny idea. I think my stash of designer fabric would have people salivating. I have about four packing boxes off all of last years hottest fabric designers... and I haven't done anything with most of them.

I also have Madame Alexander dolls and other porcelain dolls from my doll collection days of yore!! Kind of silly now that I am an adult, but I just can't part with them even though they haven't seen daylight in about 16 years.

Oh Mandie said...

I'd leave a small scrapbooking goldmine behind. lol. I'm seriously a scrapbook horder! I even have China embellishment stickers....

yeah, never been to China, never going to go to China, and am petrified of flying.

... I also have Kwanzaa stickers.... oh did I mention that I'm a 24 year old white, catholic, small town girl.

So if by chance I go to China or meet someone worth scrapbooking about who happens to celebrate Kwanzaa I'm all set :-)

Julie Anne of Diamondmeenuh Creations said...

I think I need to add my recently discovered collection of Dust Bunnies to my estate list. My friend just packed up my cabinet of ceramic frogs and toy model cars and we found several Dust Bunnies in the process of constructing a high rise office building and a condo complex.

Oh, never bathe a bird and then place it back in it's cage next to a toy dyed with Kool-Aid. I've ended up with the occasional rainbow tiel by doing that. Most memorable was Moana's pink, blue, and green wing(for 6 months)

Anonymous said...

Anne, glad I can officially have a place to record what my estate will leave behind: toilet paper tubes, branches, the wool I've shaved off pilled sweaters, and loads of broken jewellery. BTW, I drill holes in the end of tongue depressors, have kids in my class paint them, then they tie string through the hole 5 or 6 inches long, tie buttons to the end of it for book marks. They love it!

Denise Felton said...

Annie, I love your readers so much. You attract the coolest people to your blog!