Cheap Like Me

I've gone thrift store shopping every day this week. Well, it's only Tuesday night, so it's only been two days, but I'm sort of upset that all of the thrift stores are closed for the 4th, sigh. We were thinking about doing the fireworks thing tomorrow, but it's prime mosquito time around here, and fireworks are never all *that* great. I think I'm going to end up seeing "Sicko" tomorrow night. I guess that's kind of an all American thing to do?

Anyway, here are some new sites I found to help you be cheap like me, and to help you save the world by putting less things in the garbage. I know a lot of you environmentally conscious Etsy folks are interested in keeping our planet clean through upcycling and reusing, and that is one of the reasons I love you so much!

Paperback Swap
This is an awesome site that I just joined a few days ago, and already I've had tons of book trading action. The best part is, you can even trade those old CDs (who uses those things anymore?) in for books! Hooray!

Freecyle!
Another one of my new favorite things. It's a message board/email list for every community that lets people trade things right out of their home. Get rid of what you don't need, get what you want, and meet a lot of friendly like-minded people in the process. I use this all the time.

Peerflix
I just joined this, but no action yet. Then again, I only contributed two really bad DVD, and it's only been one day... I'll keep you posted.

Thrift Store Shopper Listings
Don't leave for that summer family reunion trip before consulting this one and planning all of your escape routes! Comprehensive and constantly updated. Viewers can review shops and rate them on things like selection, pricing, cleanliness, and customer service. Usually I find the worse the customer service, the better the shop... :)

Another way to be really cheap is to not actually buy things at the thrift shop, but just to take your camera and take pictures of kitsch. My friend Thom and I did this recently, and we even set up some little vignettes with the tchotchkes...

It was kind of hard to leave this creepy little Noah's Ark of Anne Geddes-like dressed up babies at the thrift store... But if you only knew how many knick-knacks I have in my place, you'd have told me to leave it there, too.


I did *not* want to buy this. Not at all. So why did I feel compelled to take a picture of it?


One of our vignettes... A nutcraker cracking a cornhusk girl? We're so easily amused.


I don't have anything to say about this one...