Five Frugal Things -- Beachcombing for Broyhill Brasilia Chairs
1) My husband and I just got home after a few days at the Oregon coast and as I wrote yesterday, I popped into Goodwill in search of hidden treasures. I did not leave empty handed!
For those outside my circle, vintage Broyhill Brasilia is considered one of the most desirable lines of midcentury furniture. So to find one chair would've made my week, but to find a full set of six was the find of a lifetime!
Especially since they were priced at $7.99 and I got a 5% discount for spending over a certain amount with my Goodwill Club card! Luckily the back seats fold down in my station wagon and I was able to fit all six chairs into the car.
Carefully . . . .
Here they are in my living room. It's what I call my "furniture showroom aesthetic" and it happens multiple times per year.
And here they are crowded around my dining table. Too big for the table, but that's neither here nor there.
Of course I'll be selling them. I already have antique oak chairs that look perfect in my 1914 craftsman house, sourced from an old Carnegie library. ($75 for nine of them!) The above listing is an inflated 1st Dibs price, but I think I should be able to sell the set for around $2000!
It's not actually an insane asking price, as here's just three of the chairs for $2495.
I currently have mine listed on Facebook Marketplace for $3000, because I might as well shoot for the stars. You never know who in the Portland area has been looking for these exact chairs. Cross your fingers!
2) I found a 1907 Liberty nickel on the floor at Grocery Outlet. What?!
It's only worth four dollars or so, but it was still an exciting find.
3) My youngest turned 28 and although we took them out for dinner, I'm hosting again tonight as it felt bad to not have a cake and candles to blow out. I took some internet advice and elevated a box mix by replacing the oil with butter, replacing the water with milk and adding an extra egg. Please ignore the expiration date.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
4) My husband and I ate up the last of our beach food on our way out of town. This was a state park, which charged $10 for parking, but we risked it and stayed close to the car and chose not to go down to the beach. The view was actually better than is conveyed in this photo.
5) I cleaned the house before we left town, (which really just means I ran the vacuum, did all laundry and tidied up a bit.) I remember listening to a podcast episode from Gretchen Rubin and her sister where they recommended a happiness hack to have your housekeepers come while you're on vacation. This way you come home to a freshly clean house and thinking that it was a completely out of touch piece of advice.
Sorry Gretchen, but a minuscule percentage of Americans employ cleaners for their homes.
However, it is nice to come home to a fresh clean house, so I started being more deliberate to how we left the house when heading out of town. And whattayaknow, it is great to arrive back to a perfectly clean house.
I'll file this under "pricey advice that I amended for my twisted cheap brain."
Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?
EPIC find on the Broyhill. Someone made a huge mistake at the Goodwill...
I can't wait to hear about the sale of your white-whale chairs! WELL DONE.
Worked some extra hours last pay period and getting some in this week Received class actions sets which this month were $175, $41, $111 and $25. They always seem to come in bunches which is fine by me.
Have several items on multiple sites..slow sales right now
How exciting to find the chairs! May they sell quickly and profitably!
For upgrading cake mixes, I had read to add mayonnaise, which essentially is increasing the oil and eggs. I throw in a quarter cup or so and it seems to make the cake moister. Happy birthday to your child!
What a find in the chairs, Katy! They are stunning!
What a great find on those chairs! Can't wait to hear the final sale price.
In my pre-kid days I always cleaned the house before I left town because I hated coming back to work waiting for me. That ended once we had kids, and just getting us all ready to go somewhere is all the bandwidth I have. I make sure the dishes and laundry are done, bills are paid, and call it good enough for this season of life.
We have a paid off right sized house (I refuse to call it small) in an older neighborhood surrounded by affluence, and it feels like all the moms in my mom group have "staff". They ask for recommendations for people to hire to do things that seem like something you just do yourself when you own a home, and it cracks me up. Not just the usual housekeepers, landscapers and pool maintenance, but contractors and handypersons for tiny jobs (the $5k quote for painting a powder room killed me - just go buy a $50 can of paint and get to it ma'am). Very thankful for my handy husband!
My favorite was the woman looking for someone to come in and decorate her SIX Christmas trees. Maybe don't have 6 then?!
Michelle H.,
Who was it that said "the rich are different from you and me."
So true!
F Scott Fitzgerald and not everyone is physically capable of painting a powder room.
The chairs! What a find! Ya did good Katy.
1. DH and I took the car for its 100,000 mile maintenance. Fifteen hundred dollars later here we are but it needed to be done. I'm glad we had the cash on hand to pay it in full.
2. We had taken a trip four years ago to the Acadia section of the Maine seacoast. While there, we lost our Senior National Park Pass, which DH had obtained when he turned 62 for all of $10 and another $10 processing fee. This was right before the price was changed to $80 for the same pass. Well, lo and behold, when we picked up the car after it had been worked on, there was the National Park Pass on the passenger seat! After four years of us looking high and low, it had slipped down into the defroster and they found it while working on the car. I'm so glad we never spent $80 on a replacement.
3. I switched over my winter clothes to my summer clothes (I have a couple of spare dressers that once belonged to my parents I keep the offseason clothes in) and was once again delighted to find items I had forgotten about.
4. My cat who usually turns up his nose at people food ate some chicken scraps. Still have some in the refrigerator...guess what he's having for supper.
5. My neighbors informed me we'll be having a block party/ potluck celebration for America's 250th anniversary. My kind of party where we can sample some of everything and nobody gets stuck with all the cooking and prep.
I am flabbergasted! Our Goodwills don't even accept furniture, much less offer up such prices on quality merchandise. And the 1907 coin! What is going on?
I got my hair cut this morning and afterwards went to the Goodwill in that neighborhood. I bought a pair of pajama capris, a box of aquarium filter cartridges, and some sparkly cloth ribbon that I think I can fashion into a makeshift dress for my Monster High doll. Not so exciting.
I did get a 25% discount on my haircut from an email offer.
Then I stopped at Aldi to buy naan to make pizza. I have mozzarella and pizza sauce to use up, and throwing it on naan seems to be the best way to do that. I also got a few other things, but the good news is it cost me nothing -- and the Goodwill stuff cost me nothing -- because I got a payment from the Blue Cross Blue Shield class action settlement in the form of a Visa debit card. Only $29, but hey, that's something!
--We cleaned out the garage, actually the storage room in back of the garage, yesterday. My former roommate, who never paid rent as agreed and caused mucho dineros in damage, never came back for her storage cabinet (new, still in box) I will put it online to local sites and sell it. Ditto, her George Foreman grill. I already have one, which I bought at Goodwill. Also found her electric space heater. If it works, I will wait until fall and then sell it.
--Went to the city council meeting last night. The powers that be in our city are going to start charging $10/month for the "privilege" of having city-issued trash cans. (I have 4 extra cans x 12 months= $480 extra per year. Not gonna do it.) They want us to use those tall paper bags designed for yard waste instead of our green 96 gallon city-issued yard waste cans. The special paper bags, which residents will have to buy and cannot reuse, don't hold enough oak leaves for nothing, and if it rains, you can count on the bags splitting open and spilling all the leaves. I let my friend do the speaking, as he organized the group "invasion" of city council chambers. But it was probably all for naught. They have decided to change systems to a less environmentally friendly, unsustainable system. They are going to grandfather in this requirement, but as soon as the grace period is over, I will have them take my recycling and yard waste trash cans, all four of them, back. They will only allow us one trash can for regular trash at no extra cost. I am fuming! (Plus since I live within city limits, they won't allow outdoor burning of the leaves. I live 2 blocks from a fire station, so I'd better not try that on my own, they'll catch me.) (Oh, I have way too many live oak leaves for composting or mulching. I may compost or mulch some of them, but am a loss as to what to do with the rest of this overwhelming amount of leaves)
--Found some test prep books among my teaching items. Will try to sell that, as well.
--Did not sue the federal government for releasing my tax returns and then use the money from the deal I made with them to set up a slush fund. Which is rumored to be how the Orange Ogre is going to help the Jan. 6 rioters.
I didn't do any of that, but rest assured, I called the congressman and U.S. senators from my state and registered my disgust about Trump's newest illegal/immoral/dishonest action.( If you're an American citizen, please do likewise.)