Second Hand Stuff

    Writing a while back about our exchange student Judy and how much she loved to go thrift-store shopping reminded me how long it has been since those days when  I used to be a thrift-store regular.
    It was really my  oldest daughter  and my youngest who were the true thrift-store afficionados of the family, though in recent years  my son  has also developed an appreciation for thrifting.  (My middle daughter, on the other hand, has never liked shopping, period, and still does not to this day).      
       Anyway, back in the heyday I was generally just the facilitator and financier of a trip to the thrift store, though while meandering  through the racks and aisles I often found some recycled treasure or other. 
     Like this dresser in my living room that I keep sheet music in. (I remember when I got it my oldest daughter said, "Mom, you can't put a piece of bedroom furniture in the living room!"  Turns out I could).  The two clocks on the dresser are also thrift-store finds,

...as well as the poster hanging above the dresser:

     Still, I'd say nowadays the only die-hard thrifter left in the family is my youngest daughter, who still loves to spend an afternoon trolling the aisles for some awesome $1.99 stuff.  She and I went thrifting a couple weekends ago and she re-stocked her tee-shirt supply and picked up a few shirts for her husband,

...Including this esoteric Moose on a motorcycle shirt.

    While I found:

    The purse of my dreams!
    They tell me it's a Kathy, whatever that means. 
     To tell the truth, I do like second-hand stuff.  My house is full of it, mostly family hand-me downs.
    In Tom's and my room is the bedroom set we inherited when we were married that belonged to Tom's mother's aunt that she brought over from Hungary:

    Also in our bedroom is the desk that my father had in the office of his first medical practice on which sits my sewing machine and a thrift-store lamp:

           In Theresa's old room is a dresser and vanity table we've also had as long as we've been married that belonged to Tom's mother's cousin.

  The book shelf below was given to us by a neighbor who couldn't sell it at a garage sale. The little seat under the vanity was the chair to a vanity I had when I was little.  I bought the mirror from K-mart about thirty years ago:

     The dresser in Tommy's old room used to be Tom's when he was young:

    The beds that went with the dresser are the ones my daughters slept on in their old bedroom.  I bought the desk and lamp second hand, and Tom's mom gave us the little glass hurricane lamp. (Scroll up and you can see its mate sitting on the vanity in my bedroom).

  
    Our kitchen table, which we've had for about 35 years,  was Tom's family's when he was growing up:

     And the art above the table was painted by a friend of my father's back in the 1950's and hung in my family's living room when I was growing up:

    Among the other art I pilfered from my parents' home is this painting of Rigoletto also done by one of my father's artist friends back in 1961:

    And a van Gogh knock-off:

     I also have my father's mother's wedding dishes

       
    And a teapot that belonged to my mother's mother,

...that sits on the other garage sale left-over book shelf that our neighbor couldn't sell.

    The red teapot and dishes on the bottom shelf I bought when I was in France 40 years ago from a friend who needed some cash more than she needed the flea-market teapot set.

    I expect I could go through the provenance of all the other second-hand stuff that make its home in ours; or I could save a few thousand words and just show a few pictures of some (but not even all) of our recycled possessions:

 The file cabinet and the table are second-hand, not Tom. Him I got brand new!  ;)