I don’t like thrifting; There are hordes of rude people, narrow isles, people in my way (how dare they!), crowded parking lots, (Saturday is half-off day, so it’s packed) traffic, etc.
So why have I been doing it? My dad and I go (went) every week and also stop for lunch at our favorite restaurants, such as Culver’s or the Wishbone. That’s always a good time, and I have to admit, with thrifts, the thrill-of-the-hunt is a big draw, something that helps me deal with all of the annoying things that thrifting inflicts. There are so many good books, cds, and DVD/Blu-ray out there, and one never knows what one will find. Sometimes, there’s nothing, but often, there are some fantastic deals on items I never would have run across anywhere else.
But after maybe about five years of this, (was it longer than that? Maybe?) I’m just out of room. I’ve purchased some fantastic libraries, which is great, but the next step is to start stacking books on the floor. I’ve done that before, and I really don’t like it. Books should be on shelves, not in boxes or stacked on a floor. I already have a few boxes of cds on the floor of my office, which isn’t something that I want going on. But there is literally nowhere else to put them. And every week, I’m getting more in that I have to catalog and sort, and that is time that I’m not using to actually enjoy what I have. This constant thrill-of-the-hunt finally has to come to an end. Which is sad. But my libraries are at a very good place, with plenty of varied options to read, hear, and watch.
It was a good time for a long time, but now we’re just going to go out to lunch and take care of errands on Saturdays. And then home for a quiet Saturday afternoon of reading, instead of dealing with the new acquisitions. I read on Saturdays now, but it’s going to be nice to be doing less at my computer in cataloging new buys when I could be reading on any given quiet Saturday afternoon.
And I will also admit that I very much understand why people pack their houses with collections of stuff; that thrill-of-the-hunt is a lot of fun, but at some point one has to stop and assess where their boundaries should be with collecting.
When I was a kid, I used to have this stack of comics that I would read every day, and when I read the comic on top, I’d transfer it to the bottom, and so on until they rotated back to the top. Every once in a while, I’d get a new stack of comics at the flea market, and that was always a huge deal; my point is that I didn’t have much, but I really used what I had.
And video games back in the day; I didn’t have an Atari, everybody else did. So any time I could get playing a friend’s Atari, Colecovision, Odyssey 2, or Intellivision, that time was gold. When I did get my Atari, the Nintendo was released, and although I could play it all of the time at my cousin’s (good times!), he only had a few games, so we played those over and over, even if we couldn’t get anywhere with them. It’s what we had. And it was a good thing, because we’d have never beaten or eventually enjoy them if we’d been inundated with lots of choices. Again, the point of that story is that one doesn’t have to have a great big library; it’s nice, and there’s nothing wrong with having a good library, but what good is it if you don’t use it? It’s just stuff on a shelf if it’s not used.
Everybody should be reading a book on Saturday afternoons.
Randy Rydberg 