GetThrifted

Historically speaking, I haven't been very good with plants. I've had a few cacti over the years, and in the last year or so, my two cacti have barely been clinging to life. One was a gift from Esther when I started college, and one I purchased at the Durfee Conservatory at UMass around the same time. When Esther and I moved to a new apartment recently, I considered calling it quits on the cacti and starting fresh from scratch with new plants.

Esther and I have had good luck tag sale-ing this weekend. One find from yesterday was a big ol' heavy duty metal toolbox. For the last year or so I've been keeping my bike tools in a sparkly blue plastic Lisa Frank-style makeup chest, complete with a butterfly on the box's latch, and a fold-out mirror inside. That box was itself a great thrift, a couple bucks at the Salvation Army, and it was actually pretty practical—a lot more practical than the system it replaced: a series of disordered bins and boxes.

I never was much of a blender guy. Growing up, we had a food processor for things like pesto, gazpacho, and making breadcrumbs (my mom used to make very kid-friendly breaded chicken cutlets). We had a blender, but I just didn't see the point of it. Frozen cocktails? Kind of a pain in the ass.

A few weeks ago, at the very beginning of tag sale season, Esther read about a cool-sounding tag sale in our neighborhood, down by the Three County Fairgrounds. So on a weekend morning walk with our dog Zevi, we stopped by. It turned out to be a good tag sale indeed: a big house full of Hampshire College students selling their stuff. Artsy college kids tend to have pretty solid tag sales and this one was no exception.