Thrifting - It's Not All Flim Flam and Fripperies

I do pick up a lot of fripperies when thrifting - some for me to keep and some to sell on.  There are all sorts of bits and bobs that catch my eye at the boot sale and when they only cost 20p or 50p they inevitably end up coming home with me.  Some I keep for a long time, some I think better of almost immediately and they get donated to a local charity shop.   However, just lately, I seem to have a good run at finding really useful, sensible, practical items.

There was, of course, the wonderfully timely find of a hot air brush a couple of weeks ago which I definitely consider as a useful item (though maybe some would say it is just a frippery!!)  There was also a haul of unopened packs of washing-up gloves (Vileda, no less) at 10p a pair.  I get through washing-up gloves at a fairly brisk pace (I seem to manage to stab the fingers with a fork on a frequent basis!!) so I was very pleased to find those.  Especially as the last pack of three pairs that I bought from Aldi - which I discovered are rather more expensive than I'd realised at £1.40 per pack - had a hole in the first pair I pulled from the pack.  My 10p-a-pair haul should last for a nice long while.

At the weekend I got two large bottles of liquid soap at 50p each - which, when added to stash I've got from the Co-op's current 'buy one get two free offer', means I've probably got enough liquid soap supplies for the next couple of years.

Yesterday at the 'Coffee and Jumble' I found an unopened pack of five zip-up suit covers.  Not something I would have automatically gone out and bought but when I saw them I realised they'd come in very useful as a lot of our 'posh' clothes are getting very dusty just from hanging in the wardrobe.  Also, I've been worrying and fretting about moths getting into my Icelandic cardigan (I've been taking it out every couple of weeks and shaking it vigorously just in case!!) and now it's all nicely zipped up in it's own cover - safe, I hope, from the ravages of the HUGE moth population we seem to have in this house.  I paid £2.00 for the pack of suit covers - which is pretty top-whack for the 'Coffee and Jumble' - but I realised after I got them home that those things cost an awful lot more to buy retail.

Also found at the 'C&J' was a new Venetian blind cleaner - a funny looking object with three furry prongs - which turned out to be wonderfully effective on the one and only Venetian blind in the house.  I'm ashamed to say that the bloomin' thing was so dusty that after one use the - luckily detachable - furry cover is going to have to be washed!!  Ahem!!  That useful object cost me all of 50p.

What sensible, useful, practical items have you thrifted recently?

Comments

[Debbie]

We have had a moth problem recently too, with about nine items of clothes ruined. I have removed everything from our wardrobes, washed it and put it all back, with pheremone traps and lavender bags everywhere (I made my own kind of quick and makeshift ones, I had some lavender here anyway and bunched it up in old hankies and tied with string), also lined all the drawers with lavender drawer liners - apparently moths don't like lavender. We caught a couple in the traps, and so far so good, haven't caught any nor seen any moths or moth holes for several weeks now.
I hope you manage to keep them out of your Icelandic cardigan!

[Loo]

Egads, moths. Hate them. We had a problem with them about two years ago. I'm really hoping we've got rid of the buggers - seen no evidence of them since. I haven't bought anything useful or sensible for an age - thrifted or otherwise! xx

[Vix]

What do you mean...it's all useful!!!!! No seriously, almost everything in our house is second-hand, from the kettle to the kitchen table to the sink and the saucepans. The most useful recent score were the VW carburettors Jon found for Gilbert at the car boot, we'd be virtually housebound (or at least unable to go booting)without them. x

[linda]

I think the washing up gloves are out to get me. It's always the right thumb that lets water in! Whenever .I find them on clearance, into my basket they go