The creepy, fantastic estate sale

Since I am home for ten days, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to hit some estate sales since I still need quite a few things for The House of Goodwill.  COVID had shut down all of them for months, and there is a sudden explosion every weekend of estate sales all over the city.

So I got up at the crack of dawn for the second day in a row, and headed out to some estate sales that looked promising in a wealthy suburb.

They both turned out to be very disappointing.  The stuff was ok, just not really what I needed, and more than that, priced too high.  (I understand when antiques are priced high.  You can’t just go out and find another one.  But when regular items are priced about the same as something you’d pick up at a store – except I have to clean these first – why not just buy it at a store?)

I’m actually at a place in my House of Goodwill shopping where my needs are pretty specific.  I’ve actually got a lot of stuff.  It’s certain types of furniture that I’m still looking for.  (Mostly dressers and armoires, etc.  But they have to be priced well to fit the budget.)

There was another estate sale in a part of town that is not great.  But the pictures of the stuff in the house looked pretty good, so I headed there.

To be honest, when I pulled up to the house I almost didn’t get out of the car.  It was a tiny house that didn’t look like it could possibly have anything inside that you would want.  But because I drove seven miles to get there, I thought I’d at least go in.

And, oh. My. Goodness.

I almost titled this post “House of Hoarding” because that is definitely what it was.  There was so much stuff in this tiny house that I couldn’t believe anybody had been actually living in it.  And it was all so WEIRD.

Zoom in on this pic and note: the stacks and stacks of crates on the left, the rows of piled-up chairs and the lineup of flower pots.  The inside was even worse...

But, oh, the stuff!  I was told a little old lady had been living there and boy, did she have great taste!

She had amazing antiques, and TONS of them.  Beautiful glassware, silver-plated serving dishes, antique pewter and candlesticks galore.  I mean, her collection was amazing!

But the rest of the house was just so weird.

The first tiny room when you entered was just walls of books (so she was weird, but a kindred spirit too).

There was no dining table or place to enjoy all this amazing antique dinnerware.  Just a path through the shelves and shelves of stuff.

The gross green carpet looked like it had been there since 1950.

There was this room full of all this old technology – and everything she had, she had multiples of.  Did you want to buy a 1970’s video camera?  There were at least 8.  Everything was covered in an inch of dust and the room was dark and gross; it looked like the headquarters for a pedophile club from 1982.

I don’t know if it was the location of the estate sale or what, but hardly anybody was there.  I was thinking about this as I was descending into the dark, creepy basement.

A great place for a murder.  You'd never be able to find the body under all the stuff.

I will be the first to admit that I have a lot of stuff.  But wow.  There must have been 30 chairs piled up in the basement.  Multiple tables.  Several sets of fireplace pokers, etc.  (And the house did not have a fireplace.)  Boxes and boxes and boxes of cheap Christmas decorations.  How could she have such amazing taste in antiques but fill the rest of her house with so much crap?  I really wanted to meet this lady.

What's an old lady doing with a stack of naked Barbies?

I made several buckets full of the kind of random stuff a house needs: extra paintbrushes, extension cords, miscellaneous tools, nightlights, etc.  This basement had everything.  Did you need a 50-foot extension cord?  Here was a box of 20!

For once in my life I bypassed the antiques and picked out the kitchen things I still needed.  (I had forgotten the house has two kitchens that will need to be equipped.)

It was really the perfect place to pick up lots of the necessary stuff, really cheap.  I bought this shabby chic two-tier blue table I thought I may put in the living room for $8.  That’s less than lunch at most restaurants.  If I end up not using it, I figure I can afford the mistake.

And I happened to meet another kindred spirit who was shopping, almost as long as I was.  She bought the silver plated candlesticks I almost bought when I first saw them.  We got into a conversation about estate sales and antiques and the best way to polish silver (she loves doing it, I hate it) and I thought – if she wasn’t a stranger I was meeting at a random estate sale - we’d probably be great friends.

But you know who I really, really wanted to have dinner with?

The lady who owned the house.

I have no idea what we would have talked about, but I know it would have been interesting.