Still Second-Handing After All These Years

    Sorry this post is so late.  I'm still on LA time, which doesn't help, but the real problem was that though I woke up early  and intended to get this post finished and sent, for several hours I was blocked.

    But Maria and Justin just went with the little ones to the beach for the day, so I opted to stay behind and  put away the blocks (and all the other toys) and am now able to start writing.
    Anyway, in the 8/21/14 post I published an essay written by my daughter Maria back when she was in high school in which she talked about her family's practice of buying second hand and her own love of "thrifting", or thrift store shopping.  She ended her essay by declaring that, no matter how much money she made when she grew up, she would still shop second hand.
    And so now, 18 years later, does she?
   As it turns out, both my daughter Maria and her husband Justin are evolved connoisseurs of the art of second-hand acquisitions.  Their house is full of found treasures:

    Not to mention real treasures ;) :

 

        Maria and Justin, both of whom got their early schooling in thrifting, have graduated from thrift stores to become disciples of Craig's list.  And of street swag, when there's good stuff to be had.  As Maria recently shared in the daily family email:
    "....last week I had to fend off a local Spanish-speaking junk man while loading some items into my truck that a neighbor had left out for the trash......he was very aggressive, but we didn't need to speak the same language to know that I was there first and was not going to give up my spoils!!"
    And though they live in the Manhattan Beach area, the best of their second-hand stuff they've gleaned from Beverly Hills  - for pennies on the dollar.
    As Justin has observed, people who have nice stuff but need to get rid of it for some reason or other - a move, a divorce, a desire to replace old stuff with new stuff - are often willing to part with their stuff for a small sum just to get rid of it without having to throw it away.  Therefore taking people's used stuff off their hands for them helps them out and , of course, benefits the person acquiring the used stuff, which for that person is new stuff.
    But, Justin warns, one has to be careful about falling into the trap of buying something that one doesn't need just because the thing happens to be a great deal.
    "You could easily become a hoarder from picking up great deals on things that you don't need.  This is true is especially true if you hang around thrift stores."
     So I guess the moral is, as always, moderation in all things.  Well, maybe not all things.