Friday, May 21, 2010

Collections Out of Control? Oh, What to Do?

Once you start collecting seriously, you put yourself at risk for addiction. One item is not enough. You think you can easily handle three, or five or ten. Soon, everything is completely out of control and your collection is now in charge. The objects of your desire have taken over your space. You are at risk of becoming the subject of a hoarders episode. You finally realize that you have to do something about the problem, so you can get your life back and get your space back in order.

What happens when your collections get out of control?

You rent a space in an antique mall and sell it off. To wit.

On the way back from the East coast, we stopped at some antique malls, one, a big mall in Centerville, IN where we found the following evidence of collections which clearly had gotten out of control and which had to be banished to the antique mall.

First, an entire booth focusing mostly on BREAD containers.

Another booth had hundreds of rolling pins.

Found a grinder line-up in another booth. What's up with those kitchen items, anyhow?

Looks like the car collectors came to their senses early on. Only three here.

But wait, right next to the cars there’s a booth with motor oil. Lots and lots of motor oil There were three huge shelves with different brands. Full cans. I understand most collections, but I really do not get motor oil collectors.


All kidding aside,  Webb's Antique Mall, Centerville, IN, is a huge mall with booth after booth of really great stuff, lots of it. It is not far from Richmond, IN. We bought very little there though, because our car was already full from a previous stop in a small town mall earlier in the day. Here are just a couple other pieces I photographed.

For those who want to store their collections we saw this Library cabinet on legs for only $250. Very nice buy and in great condition.
On top of it was a wallpaper trimmer, of interest to me only because it was originally from Evanston, IL, my old hometown. But actually totally useless.



And for the mid-century modern collector, there was this 1950s cafe booth. Hard to say for sure whether it was original or a repro, but it looked very nice. The boomerang formica was beautiful. They were asking $695 for it.

If you ever go to Centerville, take an empty truck. And an appetite. They have great peanut butter pie.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Back Home With Decisions to Make

We had a great trip and the workshop went well. More on all that later.

We have a new issue to deal with which is consuming my brain right now.

We are seriously considering moving downstairs to the first floor apartment in our building.  We've lived in the building for ten years, so we are very much ensconced in our space. So moving, even downstairs, is going to be a big task. But the opportunity to both continue with reasonable rent and to live on the first floor is very attractive, not to mention getting squatters rights on the yard and possibly use of the garage. And I think my knee will thank me very much for being spared going up and down two flights of stairs every day.

The apartment needs a fair amount of work, plus painting and cleaning throughout. I'm approaching this as a reno-for-renters opportunity as we try to pick and choose what we are actually willing and able to do and how much we can really afford to spend on property we don't own to make it acceptable for us. So we will be working with the landlord as to how we will handle it all.  At the same time I am also wondering if all the work required will really be worth it in the long run. Accomplishing it all definitely feel a little daunting.

I'm not putting any pics here, because it's technically not really my apartment yet. But if we do this, I will try to post some pics of the ongoing process.

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After speaking with the owner, it definitely looks like we are all in agreement and we are going to proceed.