Oodles and oodles

Write it down

Something surprising has happened over the last six months, and it has to do with money. If you're squeamish about reading about dollars and cents, you might want to look elsewhere today. Speaking only for myself, I don't really like talking about money, but I'm absolutely fascinated by it. I suspect I'm not alone, but it's hard to know since I don't talk about it much.

Anyway, the surprising thing is that my online sales have become a substantial part of my income - equal to or surpassing my part-time job, and more than I make picking up free-lance writing work here and there. One reason is that I'm working at it a lot harder. And the reason I'm working at it harder is that last fall, I sat down, wrote down some financial goals for the next 12 months, then did the math and figured out how to reach them.

I usually have an endless tape looping through my head about what I'd like to do, from home improvement projects to ways to pay for college. Although we've had household budgets, I never really sat down and wrote down my personal goals, let alone figured out how to reach them. It was more of a "I'd like to re-do the dining room so I'll sell some stuff online" approach. Seat of the pants.

(There's no reason for these photos other than that I don't think you need a reason to look at color plates from an old French dictionary, and they certainly beat photos of dollar bills.)

My goals were modest, and not very exciting: Eliminate all credit card debt. Add to an emergency fund. Have a little cushion of cash that could be spent, but not without a really good reason. And contribute to my kids' college funds. I wrote down where I'd like to be by September 2012, and the money it would take to get there. Then I had to figure out how to earn it. I came up with a plan and wrote it down. And because I'd rather walk on broken glass than not meet a goal I've set down in writing, I've been making steady progress.

In fact, I've shocked myself at how much progress I've made. All because I wrote down a plan in black and white. It wasn't some nebulous I'll-get-it-done-someday kind of thing. It was a piece of paper I could see every time I opened my jewelry box, which is where I put it for safe-keeping.

It's helped me, too, to give myself a weekly goal. If you've sold online, you know there's real work involved, and it's really tempting to put it off. When I start feeling that way, I tell myself that all I have to do is have $50 in sales. Five items, ten bucks each. The actual income is less, once you subtract out the expenses, but you get the idea. Even on my busiest day, or my laziest one, I can come up with five things that are easy to photograph and quick to list.

In fact, that small goal is easy enough to reach that I can usually manage that a couple of times a week. Ten items, ten bucks each = $100 in sales. But usually things sell for more than ten bucks. Sometimes they sell for $40. Ten items, forty bucks each = $400 in sales. That starts to add up.

Thinking like this has helped me stay on track, so I'm passing it along in the hopes it might help you, too. I've got some ideas on making the best of a bad estate sale, too, so the next time I talk about money, I'll talk about that. (And since I'm going to a couple of sales this weekend that honestly don't look very promising, I might be able to put my plan into action!)

Feel free to ask me anything, and I'd love to hear your ideas on reaching your financial goals, too. 

 

 

 

 

All work and no play

I seem to have very little free time these days, and so lots of little projects that I think I'd like to try have been put on the back burner. My dad decided to intervene by getting an unexplained stomach ache last week, which landed him in the hospital for a few days of tests, which meant an unscheduled trip to Pennsylvania for me. First things first, he's out of the hospital and doing well, and I'm back home. But since I knew it was likely I'd be doing a lot of sitting and waiting, I took a little project with me.

Paper-pieced quilt hexagons. If you enjoy hand-sewing, and you have an abundance of tiny pieces of fabric (guilty on both counts here), these are fun. Also, these were small enough that I could put the whole project in my purse and take them along.

I'm going to take the coward's way out and suggest that if you don't know about paper piecing, you should Google it to get better instructions than I'd be able to provide. Basically, you cut out little paper templates, fold and baste fabric around them, sew the pieces of fabric together, then remove the paper templates.

I found these a great way to use up little bits of fabric that I adored, but that weren't really big enough to do much of anything with.

I got quite a few done, and my parents were eager to participate in multiple rounds of "Which Hexagon is Your Favorite?" We all were surprisingly fond of the orange one. As a rule, we're not orange people. We're quiet, sober Lutherans, so we tend more to colors like beige. Not always the best color for a quilt. It was probably good for all of us to move a little out of our comfort zone.

 
This is the next stage, which is adding a solid-color border before joining them. I'm not exactly sure how this project will finish up, but I'm enjoying the process. And I'm grateful that my dad seems to be OK, that I got a few unscheduled days with my parents, and that, oddly enough, a worrisome situation ended up being a bit of a break from the everyday.

 

 

 

14 pounds of ephemera in search of a forever home

One way or another, my home is going to be 14 pounds lighter by the end of the week.

For I have gathered up every vintage paper-related item I can find, divided it into logical collections (based mostly on how much I can fit in a flat-rate shipping box) and photographed it. It's heading to Etsy at bargain-basement prices.

That would include the empty pattern envelopes that I've accumulated because I convinced myself someone, somewhere could use them someday.

Random scrap books and pages and illustrations.

The pages and scraps from baby books.

The pages from a wildflower book.

None of it more than $10. All of it pretty, all of it useful to some clever paper-crafting person (and cheap enough for those of you who sell to clever paper-crafting persons), all of it landing in Etsy as fast as I can list it.

 

In which a person of limited willpower is revealed

When I wrote in my last post the sentence,"I don't think you could force me to go to an estate sale at this point," I meant it sincerely. I knew I would want to go to a sale at some point in the future, but not right away. I expected my resolve to last perhaps a month. At least a couple of weeks. Certainly more than what proved to be the case, which was about 12 hours.

For the very next morning there appeared an advertisement which seemed as if it were written only for me. Yards and yards of fabric. Quilt tops. Linens. Christmas galore. And it was about five minutes from home. The sale was Saturday morning, and I got there so early, I was #2 on the list.

Clearly since this 1970s vintage sewing box is the first thing I'm showing you, the sale did not quite live up to my expectations. All of the items advertised were there, but they weren't my style. More 1980s than 1950s.

I bought the sewing box only because I wanted the nice collection of bone crochet hooks inside. I've had good luck selling these. There were the usual other interesting bits inside the sewing box - a few wooden spools, and buttons to be covered, and whatnot - although I did discover something new, which you'll see in a minute.

Possibly my favorite thing from the sale was this covered pie plate. The only problem with it is that it is beseeching me to fill it with something pie-related. The pie plate goes nicely with a tablecloth I bought, but it's currently being washed, so let your imagination run wild. (It's a nice old white cotton tablecloth with big red and blue berry clusters.) I also bought a few newish craft things to resell, so the sale wasn't a total wash.

The new thing I discovered in the sewing box is how the plastic trays that come in it are perfect sewing-drawer organizers. I don't know why I never thought of this before, since over the years I've purchased quite a few of those sewing boxes for their contents. Because the boxes are hard plastic, they're often chipped or cracked (not to mention hideously ugly) and usually aren't even worth donating. Taking the trays out never occurred to me, though.

And since the sewing box at Saturday's sale had two trays in it, I am now the proud owner of an extremely well organized sewing drawer.

 

A lifetime supply of millinery flowers, and other topics

Instead of talking all the time about the stuff I'm getting rid of, I thought I'd change things up and show you some of the stuff I'm keeping. Let's start with millinery flowers. Last week I sold 420 millinery flowers. A few weeks before that, I sold 375 pieces of millinery fruit. It's safe to say I had more than I needed.

I decided to keep only my favorites: forget me nots, and anything velvet.

I've never seen a color of forget me not I didn't like.

They're even better when they're wrapped in tiny paper bundles. I figure I might use 10 millinery flowers a year. It's possible that some years pass without the need for a single millinery flower.

Anyway, without counting every single flower or calculating exactly how many years I might have left on this planet, it's safe to say that this many flowers should probably last me a lifetime.

I did do the math on a few other things. In addition to all that millinery, I've sold 49 aprons and more than 172 yards of fabric in the past few weeks. I don't think you could force me to go to an estate sale at this point. Fortunately, there aren't any that I really want to go to right now, so we don't have to test that claim.

An off-topic photo of the doilies that were among the linens I sorted through last week. They looked really pretty all laid out like this. Pretty, yes, but I still don't want them, so I'm selling them. It wasn't nearly as much fun as you might think sorting, washing, pressing and photographing a suitcase full of linens. You only think it would be fun because the American Association of People Who Sort, Wash, Press and Photograph Linens have an excellent public relations department and have put that idea out in the media.

I spent a good part of the weekend painting furniture. The bedroom was already empty because we'd just painted it. (Pewter, by Benjamin Moore). This is how the furniture looked after it was primed. Originally there were a variety of colors involved.

It probably doesn't look all that different here, other than being upright and assembled, because I painted everything in white enamel. There seems to be a certain propensity toward changing things around this place, and I think I'd rather change the colors of linens or pillows or something rather than paint furniture so much. As I was painting, I remembered that I paid about $10 for each of these pieces. That must be my price point for furniture. At least for furniture that needs to be repainted.

In an amazing step in my personal growth, I took apart my oak pedestal dining room table, managed to fit it in the back of a Honda hatchback (no small feat), and took it to a professional to have it refinished instead of doing it myself. Having fallen victim to the propaganda from the American Association of People Who Sort, Wash, Press and Photograph Linens, there was no way I was going to believe anything from the American Association of People Who Strip, Sand, Stain and Varnish Dining Room Tables.

 

The case of the empty suitcase

The decluttering project continues unabated. I'm loving the way that space is magically appearing. This morning I went upstairs with one thought in mind: What can I get rid of next? I saw a vintage suitcase that looked promising.

Vintage suitcases make great storage. But sometimes I think I fill them with nothing but good intentions.

This one, for example. All of those linens and doilies that I really didn't want but were too good to throw away or donate went in this suitcase. I'm pretty sure I didn't intend to buy any of these - they just came in a box with something that I did want.

Lots of pretty linens stitched with care.

Lots of lovely crochet.

A little tablecloth appliqued with crinoline ladies. The skirt is open on the sides, so an embroidered napkin can be tucked in. I vaguely remember acquiring this.

I had forgotten all about this.

A stamped embroidery piece for a child's apron.

With scotty dogs on the border.

All of it deserves a better home than a suitcase. So my project today is getting it ready to sell. (At the urging of some of you, there's now an eBay link in my sidebar.) And the suitcase is empty already, and since I never liked it that much, it's going to the town Swap Shop.

I think the house feels lighter already. It helps that it's a beautiful sunny day, and that a bluebird has been singing his heart out all morning.  

 

 

Fresh starts and gingham checks

I like graph paper. I like to make to-do lists on graph paper so I can draw a tidy little box next to each item and mark it off when the chore is done. That's probably why I like gingham. And January. A fresh calendar, a new year, all those open calendar squares filled with nothing but possibility. I spent a lot of January thinking about fresh starts. More to the point, I spent a lot of January doing some particularly non-blogworthy activities but getting what feels like a good beginning.

One piece of fabric, one color of thread, and a hundred different designs that can result from it. This is chicken scratch embroidery, which also has been called depression lace and gingham lace. (I think I like those names even more.)

The reason I have my gingham aprons out is because I'm selling them. Actually, I'm selling pretty much my whole apron collection. It feels good. Every year I go on a decluttering binge in January - I think a lot of us do - and somehow it never quite works. Now, I'm not a big fan of self-help books, and when I heard a radio talk show advertise an upcoming interview with the author of the book "Throw Out Fifty Things," I mentally - perhaps actually - rolled my eyes. Been there before. If you ask me, 50 is on the low end of the decluttering scale.

But I enjoyed the interview enough to read the first chapter of the book on Amazon (you can read it here), and here's the part that made an impression on me: She's not talking about 50 items. She's talking about, say, 50 collections. If you pack up 50 of your old books, you aren't done. That's not 50 things. That's one thing: your old books.

And somehow, that made a lot of sense to me.

By the end of this week, I'll have sold (or given away) at least 50 aprons. I had a good collection. I've even exhibited them a few places locally. But for the past few years I've had them stored in a huge vintage suitcase. Every once in a while I'd forget what was in the suitcase, and I'd open it up and see the aprons. And I was not excited to see them. It was more like seeing a relative you know you should love but don't really enjoy.

So the aprons: that's one thing. I took boxes and boxes of books to our local library yesterday for their annual sale. That's two. Vintage wallpaper, vintage millinery - out. I have washed, pressed, folded, photographed, sold and shipped literally hundreds of yards of fabric in the last couple of weeks: All the fabric that I said I'd sell someday has either been sold or will be in another week or two. An attic closet filled with household whatnots - cleaned. So I think I'm up to around six things. It seems like a lot of work to have only six things to claim, but I think that's the point.

So that's where I'm at and what I've been up to. (Can I just say how nice it was to hear from some of you who wondered where I'd been? That was just very kind.)

Am I done collecting? Not a chance.

Am I done sorting? Not a chance of that, either.

(I'm adding this only because some of you will ask: If you're ever interested in what I'm selling on eBay, you can always search by my seller name, kremisclub. I wanted this post to be something other than a big old advertisement.)