Craigslist or Bust

Normally I go through Craigslist every Wednesday to scout out garage sales happening in my town, plus a few towns east or west of me. For the most part, that's how I find my garage sales.

Sure, there's Garage Sale Finder, but they really are just taking garage sales listed on Craigslist or in the local papers and putting it on their site. Plus I find it a little hard to navigate through their jumble of sales.

I basically disregard the garage sales that advertise lots of kids stuff or the garage sales in newer neighborhoods. Not to discriminate against people with small kids or people in fancy brand new houses, but those people rarely have the vintage items I am looking for.

It's a good day when I see people on Craigslist mention those magic words "antiques and collectibles" in their ad. Those are my kind of people.

Now sometimes you get to said "antiques and collectibles" garage sales and they are a bust. The antiques they have are of the Mayor McCheese collector glasses type. Or their antiques are totally overpriced even for the most exclusive antique store.

But this weekend I hit a sale that lived up to the ad. And to top it off it was run by the nicest mother-daughter team that were into much of the same kind of decor that you currently see in blogland right now. They could have set up a booth at the local antique mall with all their stuff.

I liked the garage sale so much that I went once on Friday and went back for a second look on Saturday.

On Friday I bought this stuff.

A great basic wooden chair.

Now you all know that I don't need another chair in my house. Have about 20 too many, but I really have a hard time remembering that little fact while I'm out shopping.

It's not until I'm pulling into my garage and see the 6 chairs hanging on the wall and the 2 sitting directly in front of my van, that I remember my over abundance of seating options. Sort of smacks me in the face.

I've been looking for a cool tool box for a while, so I got all excited when I saw this galvanized one.

I'll show you at the end of the post what I did with this little guy.

I also purchased this wooden hanger

that Clara Mae had written her name on. I think it's adorable that a little girl claimed this hanger as her own.

On Friday it was lightly raining when I was at their garage sale and they were still in the process of putting things out. I could see a lot of stuff in their garage, but didn't want to be rude and start rifling through everything.

So I went back on Saturday to check out what things I had missed the day before and bought these items.

I think this is a expandable file folder holder for the top of your desk. At least that is what I'm going to use it for.

And this hooked seat cover caught my eye. I love the bright colors of it.

I just might be able to find a chair to put it on!

There were probably about ten other really cool things at their garage sale that I would have bought, but I am trying to curb my garage sale finds to just items that I truly can use. I know, strange concept to wrap my head around.

I guess I could have used the tool box in my office to hold stuff (you wouldn't actually use it as a tool box, would you?), but I sort of had my heart set on making it into a flower box. So I went to Wally World and bought some clearance impatiens.

And went with my original plan to make a tool box flower holder.

So, do you only buy things you need at garage sales? Or do you just buy cool things, no matter if you need them or not?

And what is the phone number for chair buyers anonymous?