a peek inside the fishbowl

1 | Shan

May 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am

All great finds. I am impressed! Love that green bowl. And the s&p shakers are cute. My Grandma used to collect salt and pepper shakers. I’m not sure she set out to do that, but they just kept coming to her. I wish I had thought to keep a set.

2 | Denise

May 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm

my family and i shop almost exclusively at Value Village- other than undies and sundries as well as eyeglasses, i can’t think of a single thing i haven’t been able to find there :D

3 | tali

May 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm

I alternate between loving Value Village, and thinking its depressing.

So, if you go to my blog, today’s post is about my recent second-hand finds…

4 | Jen

May 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm

Ooh. I love your squirrel S&Ps. Love them. I’m addicted to buying second-hand (third-hand, tenth!) art. Today I picked up fabulous 1960s piece featuring cat silhouettes made out of old newspapers. It was $35 so not VV prices but flea market prices indeed. Even bad art is good art when it has been loved by others.

5 | Javamom

May 3rd, 2008 at 9:02 pm

I love what you did to the rack. It’s a wonderful idea!.You are quite the inspirator!

6 | Marla

May 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 pm

Done! Under the wire, but I”m done.

http://hellojosephine.blogspot.com/2008/05/second-hand-show-and-tell-challenge.html

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s. Because I approve of things like squirrel s&p’s you know.

7 | DaniGirl

May 4th, 2008 at 6:17 am

Oh, the cuteness of those little shelves! I covet the ability to be able to see past what something is to what it could be. Very very nice!

A question for you, and for Marla, because I know she’s phobic about germs like me. Do you ever get squeeshy about the germs and dirt on used stuff? Do you sanitize stuff when you bring it into the house? This is one of my main barriers to fully embracing second-hand and found things, especially furniture and other fabrics. (Although I’m beginning to realize that new things have their own chemical issues which might be even worse than people-gunge!)

Sorry for the tangent!

8 | andrea

May 4th, 2008 at 7:25 am

I’ve seen some great finds! You guys rock it.

tali: I also alternate between thrilled and depressed, but on the whole I am a fan of ValVill.

Jen: I have yet to find some good art, and I always always make a point of looking for it wherever I go. Please share your finds!

Marla: I have no words for you. You are a pro.

Dani: I gave the little shelf a good wipedown because it was dusty. When I buy clothing I wash before wearing. I have bought some Groovy Girls toys in the past which I stuffed into the freezer for a day or two to kill anything that might there (lice?), but otherwise, germs aren’t something I think about when buying these kinds of household items. I mean what are you worried about? Catching a cold or something? I think germs can only survive a maximum of a couple of days (I’m guessing) on hard surfaces. You’re more likely to catch something on the door handle going into the store.

On that note, I would never buy bathing suits or underthings and am squeamish when I think about used hairbrushes and heavily-worn shoes! :)

9 | Marla

May 4th, 2008 at 10:14 am

Andrea’s right –

Many scary things can’t survive without moisture, so the surfaces just need the sort of cleaning you’d do for anything you already owned yourself.

Soft items just need laundering, or yes – as Andrea said – freezing.

Alternately, some time in the highest heat setting in the dryer will help. As a matter of fact, I tumble everything every so often – like Josie’s stuffed animals that can’t be washed, just for the allergen/ dust mite issue. Most of her softies are washable, and I do a load of them every once in a while – and the regular guys who travel around with her every two weeks or so.

I also differentiate buying a sofa from a Frat house from a sofa from a nicer source. I may look like an idiot bending over it and smelling it from top to bottom, covering every inch in wide sniffy sweeps – but that and a visual inspection is enough to satisfy me that I’m not sitting in Bubbe’s pee. I’ll vacuum an item like that a few times too, just for the dust mite issue. Our local hip coffee shop finally replaced their sofa; and blogged that they, themselves, cringed whenever little kids crawled on it – as it had been through several bachelor apartments before it landed there. Long ago I learned to avoid anything that had the possibility of guy spooge on it.

Germ freaks like me have to use perspective all day long if we want to function. Remembering that people don’t put raw chicken inside a package of megablocks and shake them like a bag of Shake’n’Bake helps.

There are scarier things out there. As part of the steering committee for a small local park who are determining the terms of use for the off-leash area, we found in our research that if dog poop is scooped, there is very little to worry about in terms of contamination. It’s not unhygienic to have dogs in a park where children play. But, there is actually more fecal matter containing E. coli on the bars of the jungle gym in any children’s play area in any park.
So, we have nothing to fear but our own poo, it seems.