Finds and “Spring Cleaning”

While I have been lamenting that my neighborhood thrift store has been thin on the ground with the kinds of things I like to buy, I still do find stuff from time to time. A few days ago, I found this small brown Canyon Outback leather backpack. The leather is soft, strong and the backpack is clean with very little wear. This little classic will last for years. Wish I’d had one when I was a student.

Brand new this retails for $250. I’ll list this gently used one for $50 on eBay.

And I spotted this outrageous mid-century fat lava pottery candleholder handmade in Iceland. So rare to find things from Iceland! It is wonderful with its dark autumnal drippy glaze and rough, lumpy bits. It has a couple of small chips, but they are hard to spot.

This is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is someone’s! In fact, it looks quite fetching on my mantel! I’ll be listing this unique piece in my Etsy store for $40.

And I grabbed these two ceramic Austrian creamers. (They have a gold foil label “Made in Austria” and the incised number 6073.) Haven’t been able to find anything about them but they are likely circa 1940-1960s. Not sure what I’ll price these for.

And I bought another painting in the “you have to speculate to accumulate” genre. I haven’t received the painting yet, but this is a photo from the listing.

Typically I am not drawn to flower paintings but this is a small one by Dorsee Sternberg. Now Dorsee has two paintings that show up in WorthPoint–one sold in 2011 for $1,999 and the other in 2013 for $2,200. They are much bigger paintings, and of animals, but still it got me thinking that perhaps this little mid-century modern Dogwood painting by Dorsee was worth investing in. The frame isn’t doing it any favors so I’ll remove that and perhaps replace it.

I’m happy with my few finds, but starting in April I’m going to take a break from buying. A moratorium! I’ll likely suffer from thrifting withdrawals, but I really need to switch my focus for a bit to do some spring cleaning for my business.

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My Spring Cleaning Plan

1. Stop buying for a few weeks. Period.
2. Go through inventory and get rid of  “dead wood.”
3. Focus on listing, and more listing, to clear out the inventory piled in our family room.
4. Re-organize my stored inventory so things are grouped more logically and are easier to find.

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In a weird way I’m looking forward to this. The piles of my unlisted inventory have been taunting me for months. I’d make a little progress and then bring home more stuff so I’d never clear the decks, so to speak. My disaster zone…

And the deadwood…it will be good to donate the lower value, less exciting items that have been languishing in my store for years! For about two seconds I thought about saving them for a yard sale, but haven’t had much success with yard sales in the past and they are a lot of work for the $ I make.

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To end on a more upbeat note, I just sold these wonderful petrified wood bookends to a vintage motel near Yellowstone park in Montana. How perfect is that!

While I won’t have any posts about new finds for a few weeks, I will still have things to share and promise not to disappear. 🙂

A blessed Resurrection Sunday to my readers who celebrate Easter.

As always, happy hunting,

Karen