REVIVAL

2012-02-15T19:42:00.007+11:00

2012-02-14T19:24:00.003+11:00

BOOK LAUNCH

Saturday, 24th of March, 5pm - 8pm

MAD Gallery, 19 High Street, Lancefield

Drinks at bar prices, café open throughout the evening

2012-02-09T20:03:00.007+11:00

One of the things I sell in my shop is second-hand books, and friends and family have very kindly given me boxes of books they no longer want. Sorting through them can be quite telling. For instance, the box of books my father-in-law gave me contained quite a few titles about running a small freehold (I didn't know he was interested in that) living in France (his francophilia I knew about) and curing cancer with alternative medicine (I knew he didn't want his mother to die - who does? - but I didn't know it had led him in this direction).

Speaking of mortality, the whole second-hand books thing has had my boyfriend questioning the point of his own library. For as long as I've known him, it has been a point of pride that he doesn't part with a single volume. But watching some of our fifty- and sixty-something friends cull their collections has made him wonder what exactly it is he's hanging on to.

2012-02-06T22:01:00.003+11:00

I know that the chances are that I will never win the lottery. But I have a special set of numbers, and sometimes, when I'm feeling desperate, I'm tempted to buy a ticket. Recently, however, I discovered a way to avoid this temptation. Whenever I walk into a Tattslotto outlet with the intention of buying a ticket, I pick up a results slip from the previous week's draw instead. As I walk away from the outlet I look at the results slip, and sure enough, my "special" numbers are never on it.

2012-01-31T00:06:00.000+11:00

Community First Association Op Shop, North Melbourne

2012-01-25T18:42:00.004+11:00

The Amy Emporium is OPEN

8B Victoria Street, Macedon

SECOND-HAND CLOTHING

SUSTAINABLY-PRODUCED CLOTHING

BOOKS, SUSTAINABLY-PRODUCED GIFTS, COFFEE

TRADING HOURS
Monday: 9.30-2.30
Tuesday: 9.30-2.30
Wednesday: CLOSED
Thursday: 9.30-2.30
Friday: 9.30-2.30
Saturday: 9.30-2.30
Sunday: CLOSED

2012-01-18T19:01:00.000+11:00

2012-01-12T23:48:00.003+11:00

2012-01-04T20:51:00.004+11:00

Many years ago, when I worked for a publisher, the staff used to be allowed to go down to the dump bin at lunchtime and help themselves to books. There was nothing wrong with these books, they were just a little shop-worn and so couldn't be re-sold. The rule was that you were allowed five books per day, but seriously, who in their right mind would stick to a "rule" like that? I, like everybody else, amassed quite a collection; helping myself to impressive-looking tomes I had no interest in reading just in case I ever found myself with a store selling second-hand books. Well, that day has finally come, but I don't have any of those books left. You see, in the intervening 12 years, I've moved house three times; and each time, I've divested myself of as many possessions as possible before packing my boxes. Also, each of those times, opening a store hasn't even remotely been on the horizon. But at 36, I've entered a new stage of life, with its own source of books. Some of my friends' parents are now downsizing, or putting their names on waiting lists for serviced apartments or rooms in retirement homes. These people don't fancy taking 30 years' worth of books with them, and are only too happy for someone to come along and cart them away. The only "price" I have to pay is to stick around for a cup of tea and a biscuit on the day in question; and in all honestly, most of the time - with most of these people - I can't think of anything else I'd rather do.

Image via Oxfam Bookshop, Petersgate York

2011-12-21T18:55:00.005+11:00

Judging by the sheer volume of Christmas decorations that flood stores at this time of year, it would appear that many people don't merely replace the odd tired or broken ornament, but completely overhaul the look of their trees and homes each year. But I think there's something to be said for keeping new purchases to an absolute minimum, for reusing the same old decorations as much as possible: It's so the children can exclaim, "I remember this, we bought this when I was three," or "Remember this? This is mum's favourite."

2011-12-15T15:33:00.000+11:00

All a real estate agent needs to set up shop is a telephone and a computer. But if your office has street frontage and large windows, why not do a sideline in second-hand wedding dresses?

2011-12-05T19:42:00.008+11:00

My forthcoming book Playing House

2011-11-19T17:08:00.004+11:00

I'm about to sign a lease on a shop, and while it's what I want, I'm worried I'll make a mess of things and send the whole family to the poorhouse. My boyfriend was away in Canberra when I received word that the owner of the building had accepted my application, so I turned to our daughters. "I got the shop. I'm glad, but I'm scared. What if I screw it up? What if the shop doesn't do well? What advice can you offer me?" My daughters were thoughtful for a moment, then my seven-year-old said, "Sell more interesting stuff," and then "Find out what people want." My eight-year-old, meanwhile, merely said, "Daddy'll still have his job, won't he?"

2011-10-20T19:27:00.006+11:00

I didn't particularly like the curtains that were hanging in the lounge room of my new house, but I didn't especially dislike them either. I would have left them up, but they had to be taken down when I had the place painted. And once they were down, my not-especially-liking-them stopped me from putting them back up.

After a while, I got sick of the sight of those curtains sitting in a box, so I took them to my local op shop. Today, it occurred to me that I could use them to create fitting rooms for my shop, so I went back to my local op shop to ask if I could have them back. Unfortunately, they'd been sold. I was disappointed, but also surprised: most of the things I donate to the op shop sit there for weeks, if not months.

The previous owners' interior decoration

2011-10-12T19:40:00.007+11:00

A week after finalising the sale of my old house, I realised there was a key I'd forgotton to pass on to the new owners. It was only an old-fashioned generic key, but the sense of closure inherent in divesting myself of it appealed to me. When I went to see my selling agents for the last time, however, I forgot all about it. I hugged the agents at that last meeting (sick, right? Money'll do that to you), and sent them a thank you card a few days later, so I really didn't fancy dropping in on them just to hand over a key. So I kept it. And guess what? The back door of my new house has a generic lock on it, and the key works.

2011-10-07T18:08:00.004+11:00

2012 Diary, $45

I'm fussy about the diary I use, which makes it a difficult item to buy second-hand or recycled. Not only do I need to have it in time for the new year, but I also have a preferred format: the Moleskine notebook-style, with the days of the week on the left and a facing page of notepaper on the right. Needless to say, Moleskines are not made of recycled paper. But Rebound Books, a company that uses 100% recycled paper, has released a line of diaries using the same format (with the exception of the pages of the Little Golden Book they're made of). The bonus is that my seven-year-old got a kick out of choosing my 2012 diary for me; and I get a kick out of that.

2011-09-30T22:17:00.000+10:00

Book, 50 cents

I know that hardcovers are supposed to be superior to softcovers, worthier and more collectable, but I've always preferred the look and feel of paperbacks. Also, I'm offended by the idea of dust jackets, especially the ones that are an exact replica of the glossy cover underneath. What a waste of ink and paper! Though I must admit, I do like finding a book in an op shop and deciding it's too scruffy to give as a gift, only to lift off the dust jacket and find the exact same artwork underneath, only in pristine condition.

2011-09-12T17:32:00.000+10:00

The reappropriation of detritus from around my new property continues. This galvanized trash can was in one of the sheds. After installing a 7000-gallon rainwater tank one metre into the ground, I needed something that would enable me to reach the lever after the area around it was backfilled. This is what my artist/auteur jack-of-all-trades came up with.

That same week, he sourced a second-hand piano for my eight-year-old, who has been having lessons since the start of the year. I'd been dreading the amount of money I was looking at spending for a reconditioned piano, and he came up with the idea of convincing another client, who owned a piano but whose children had long since stopped playing ,to let me have his on permanent loan.

2011-09-07T12:09:00.001+10:00

I have no love at all for this very plain and rather ineffectual kitchen light. When I moved into my new house, the light was even missing its shade, so I planned to replace the whole fixture at the earliest opportunity. But then I found a shade for $2 in an op shop in the next town. When the shade snapped into place - it was actually the right size! - it felt so serendipitous that I no longer plan to get rid of it.

The same op shop also had a brass pendant light for $10 (reduced to $5 when the ladies noticed it hadn't been cleaned) which happens to be the exact same style as the ones hanging in the pub. "That's a good thing?" a friend who doesn't go to the pub much said. "Yes, it's a good thing," I said. I go the pub all the time.

2011-08-26T09:48:00.008+10:00

Last night, my boyfriend and I went to see Jonathan Franzen give a speech at the Melbourne Town Hall. As we drove the hour and a half into Melbourne I turned to him and said, "I'm so excited." As we sat in a café on Exhibition Street having a coffee I said, "I'm so excited." As we sat in a pub on Little Bourke Street having a pot I said, "I'm so excited." And as we walked down Collins Street towards the venue it occurred to me that technology is not, and never will be, king. There are probably dozens of Jonathan Franzen speeches on YouTube, but I'm not interested in looking any of them up. Some things you don't want to do vicariously. Some things you only want to do yourself.

Afterwards, as we lined up with other patrons to have our copy of Freedom signed, we overheard someone say, "He's funnier than I thought he would be." My boyfiend and I looked at each other as if to say, Well der, intelligent people generally are. Pseudo-intelligent people, meanwhile, are generally dull as doornails.

2011-08-25T10:57:00.005+10:00

Silicone sealant, $3.99

The maxim treat others as you would like to be treated has applications right across a person's life, including their approach to op shops. I am wary of what I donate to op shops because I don't want to be burdening a charity with the cost of disposing of unsaleable goods. And yet, I buy a lot of things from op shops that could easily be classified as rubbish, such as half-empty tubes of silicone sealant. So I feel justified in donating the antennas off my now-redundant wireless modem to my local op shop. Those little black sticks may well pose a mystery to the ladies unpacking my box; but then, that's what they have a "What is it?" shelf for.

2011-07-29T17:53:00.004+10:00

I’m currently renovating my new house, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have the services of a local artist/auteur who moonlights as a jack-of-all-trades. This man built his own home out of assorted second-hand materials - collected over a lifetime - and was in possession of several items that were surplus to requirements. He was kind enough to give me a two-tier 1940s timber mantelpiece that had been trumped by a more elaborate Victorian one, and he made me a multicoloured bathroom out of whatever tiles were sitting in his shed. He also tore up my old hot water service to create copper splashbacks for the kitchen.

2011-07-20T17:41:00.000+10:00

2011-07-15T21:54:00.008+10:00

Mantlepiece, $1990
Select Salvage

The house I bought and am about to move into was built as a holiday home in 1968 and has never been renovated. It has a single sink in the kitchen, and a laundry sink only in the bathroom/laundry. That’s right; no vanity. Everyone assumed I’d be buying a porcelain sink quick smart, and it’s true that there are many lovely, pastel-coloured ones around in recycled building supplies stores. But I am a great advocate of slumming it where you can, and splurging only where you want to. So I'll be brushing my teeth at a utilitarian laundry sink but warming myself in front of a wood heater surrounded by a multi-tiered mantelpiece.

2011-06-22T14:44:00.001+10:00

I collect cords. Not on purpose, of course, it’s just that every machine or appliance that comes into the house comes with a cord. Or requires a cord. And whenever one of those machines or appliances leaves the house in a state of disrepair, I keep the cord. Just in case. But I’m about to move, and while it’s one thing to keep a jumble of redundant cords out of sight at the back of a cupboard, it’s quite another to put them into a box and purposely cart them to a new home. But what if I need one of those cords down the track? As I was packing last night, I had an epiphany: I’d donate them to an op shop. But not just any op shop, my local. That way, if I ever need one of those cords again, I can just mosey on into the township and buy it back. Cords are one of the slower-moving items at my local op shop, but there is a basket dedicated to housing them. And for half of those cords, it is the basket from whence they came.

2011-06-22T14:37:00.000+10:00

H.O.T. Rock Op Shop, New Gisborne

2011-06-17T16:15:00.005+10:00

Helping Hands Mission op shop, Essendon

2011-06-10T17:34:00.005+10:00

In The Dark Knight, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character says of the Moscow Ballet, “Harvey’s taking me next week.” In Joanna Trollope’s latest novel Daughters-in-law there is the line, “Luke took Charlotte to Venice for their honeymoon.” Honestly, do men really have to be taking women places in this day and age? Don’t couples just do stuff together?

2011-06-10T13:27:00.009+10:00

Recycled toothbrush, by Preserve

I took my eight-year-old to the dentist to have the tartar removed from her front bottom teeth (and no, I don’t use the words “front bottom” in any other context: we say “vulva” in our house) and afterwards she was positively skipping with delight. I’d had no idea she was even bothered by the stains on her teeth (I made the appointment for healthy-gum reasons) and I think she surprised herself, too, with how pleased she was. But when I told my mother about it, and about my surprise that tooth-whiteness even figured in my daughter’s consciousness, she let out the matronly-Chinese-woman equivalent of, “Well, der.”

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was treated to a confidence boost of his own. He forgot his house keys and had to climb in through the kitchen window. Turns out he's not as fat as he thought.

2011-06-07T19:30:00.005+10:00

Cap, 50 cents

Most of the time, when a person owns a Coca-Cola cap, it’s because they were given it as part of a promotion. But not my eight-year-old. She bought hers. We were at an op shop in Katoomba two years ago and she was rummaging through a basket of hats when she saw it and had a Eureka moment. She really loves drinking Coca-Cola, you see, so it was as if the cap had been made for her. Mind you, this is a girl who says the only thing she dislikes about roller-skates is that they make her appear taller, and, as she puts it, "I like people to know the truth about me." I wonder if she’s the only person in the world who wears a Coca-Cola cap in earnest: not thoughtlessly, not as a fashion statement, but as honest self-expression. Like I said, she really loves her Coke.

2011-06-06T08:58:00.004+10:00


Photo by George Marks

If a shopkeeper were to congratulate you on something you found in their shop, telling you how clever you are, how lucky you are, it would be absurd. But this kind of thing flies in op shops, because the stock isn’t hand-picked by somebody but kindly donated by anybody and everybody. I was at the Vinnies store in Castlemaine when a woman visiting from NSW found a needlepoint work depicting historic Castlemaine buildings. “Aren’t you clever!” the sales assistant exclaimed. “Well, what a find. Look at the work in that, the detail in that. Maria! Dorothy! Come out here and have a look at what this lady has found! Isn’t it beautiful. Oh, you’ve done well for yourself, haven’t you dear? Yes, a wonderful way to end your visit. That’ll be $5.”

2011-05-30T20:16:00.008+10:00

Pool float, $2
Church Bargain Shop,
Heidelberg

I needed a large piece of heavy-duty, weatherproof material to drape over the guinea pig hutches in the wet. At an op shop, I inspected an old inflatable pool float, which was $30. The woman who’d donated it happened to be on duty. “It’s in perfect condition, hardly been used,” she said. I explained what I needed it for, and she said, “Oh, you should just go buy some sheeting then. It’ll work out cheaper.” Well, heavyweight waterproof fabric costs between $10 and $20 per metre, while an old pool float only costs $2… if it’s a different pool float from a different op shop, that is.

2011-05-26T14:03:00.003+10:00

2011-05-25T12:30:00.024+10:00

TV cabinet, $60

A friend of mine was recently in the market for a TV cabinet, so when I saw this one in a Vinnies store, I took a photo of it and emailed it to her. She rushed down to the store the next morning, but not to buy the TV cabinet: the little bedside tables to the left had caught her eye.

Curtain, $4 - $6 each

She then mentioned that she was in the market for curtains with an extra-long drop. I saw these yellow silk ones - with a 2.7m drop - in a new-fangled Christian church op shop (it was the church that was new-fangled, not the op shop).

Coat, $10

We went to the shop together to buy them and she also came away with a wicker suitcase, a leather jacket and children's gumboots. I left empty-handed. My friend has just finished renovating, you see, so the self-imposed embargo on shopping has finally been lifted. I, however, am about to start renovating, so I am reluctant to spend money or to bring anything new into the house. Unless, of course, it's something really special. Such as a vintage wool coat, which is a rare sight in op shops these days.

2011-05-20T08:09:00.016+10:00

The Chinese may not be the best recyclers, but like poor people everywhere, they are natural re-users. If this scene were taken from an Australian kindergarten, you can bet the stepping-stones would be brightly-coloured, purpose-built, Australian Standard-ticked, Occupational Health and Safety-approved pieces of moulded plastic. And made in China, of course. For the world. A world which, incidentally, is not averse to tut-tutting China for its environmental track record whilst placing orders for as much plastic fantastic as will fit into a shipping container.

Photo by Sanghee Lui, via The Age

2011-05-15T09:35:00.002+10:00

Socks, 50 cents

Two years ago, I got it into my head to weed the odd socks out of my life. I placed a basket on a chest of drawers, and every time I came across an odd sock while folding the laundry, I put it in the basket. If, after several loads of washing, its brother turned up, then well and good. But if it didn’t, then that odd sock was transferred to the “rags bag” (actually another basket) to await use as a cleaning cloth. The months rolled by, but the number of socks in the odd socks basket never diminished. How was this possible? Finally, my boyfriend revealed that the odd socks basket was where he went for a pair of clean socks each morning.

2011-05-09T11:05:00.009+10:00

I have plans to open a second-hand clothing store in the town I moved to three years ago. But whenever I talk to people about it, I fear I come off sounding twee and naive. Recently, while re-reading Alice Munro's Open Secrets, I came across a passage that captured
my feelings on the matter. The passage is from a story entitled The Albanian Virgin, and is partly about a woman who escapes to a country town and ends up opening a bookstore there:

"How could I tell what I liked so much? Certainly it was not what a new merchant might be looking for - bustle and energy to raise the hope of commercial success. Not much doing was the message the town got across to me. And when a person who is opening a store doesn't mind hearing the message Not much doing, you could ask, What's going on? People open shops in order to sell things, they hope to become busy so that they will have to enlarge the shop, then to sell more things, and grow rich, and eventually not have to come into the shop at all. Isn't that true? But are there other people who open a shop with the hope of being sheltered there, among such things as they most value - the yarn or the teacups or the books - and with the idea only of making a comfortable assertion? They will become a part of the block, a part of the street, part of everybody's map of the town, and eventually of everybody's memories. They will sit and drink coffee in the middle of the morning, they will get out the familiar bits of tinsel at Christmas, they will wash the windows in spring before spreading out the new stock. Shops, to these people, are what a cabin in the woods might be to somebody else - a refuge and a justification."

2011-05-04T20:13:00.000+10:00

Cassidy Secondhand Centre, Castlemaine

2011-05-03T11:44:00.008+10:00

While flipping through a magazine, I came across an article about a Hollywood movie star shopping in Paris. There were photos of this woman exiting stores carrying Chanel and Louis Vuitton shopping bags, and for the umpteenth time I thought to myself, why do Hollywood movie stars go to Chanel or Louis Vuitton when they’re in Paris? There are Chanel and Louis Vuitton stores in LA! If I were in Paris, I’d go shopping for things I couldn’t get anywhere else.

St Ouen Flea Market, Paris, image via Sweet Sassafras

Coiffeur Vintage, Paris, image via Sweet Sassafras

2011-04-26T18:42:00.012+10:00

While watching TV commercials last night, I was appalled by the push to buy everyday cleaning products that were laced with toxic and corrosive substances. Antibacterial handwash? Surface spray with bleach? As far as I’m concerned, antiseptic is for first aid, and bleach is for cleaning the blood off the walls after you’ve murdered someone. Our house is Domestos and Dettol-free, and I don’t think we’ve suffered unduly from the 99.9% of germs we can’t see. There’d be a lot of them, too, since most of the things we own - including the toys - are onto their second lease of life.

2011-04-22T20:50:00.002+10:00

Weighty tomes...

Three Legged Chair, Mornington

2011-04-18T17:36:00.006+10:00

Diary, 50 cents

We all like to be treated like royalty now and then. My boyfriend is treated like royalty whenever he drops in on his old cricket club during a home game. I am treated like royalty whenever I am the first customer of the day at one of the cafés at which I am a regular. And everyone is treated like royalty at the Blood Bank.

The royalty treatment starts even before you’ve entered the building. That’s right - free city parking. Then, each step of the way, you’re thanked for coming in. Quite often, just before the needle is put into your arm, the nurse might even say something like, “I just want you to know that you’re saving three lives today.” Fifteen minutes later, you're enjoying a free milkshake, party pie and slice of fruit cake in the cafeteria.

Then, just as you're starting to think that maybe Kate Middleton ought to be envying you, you realise you don't have to feel like a fraud if you find a Blood Donor Diary in an op shop and decide you could do with it. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!

2011-04-10T21:23:00.018+10:00

I recently sold my house. As a relatively modest house, it was marketed under the heading
"Perfect Start”. Modest houses, however, are just as likely to be bought by downsizers as first-home buyers; and it was indeed a downsizing couple who ended up buying my house. So if it wasn't for the fact that real estate-land is such a peppy place, it could have been advertised, “Perfect Finish”.

2011-04-05T20:52:00.001+10:00

2011-04-02T14:28:00.004+11:00

I don’t personally know anyone who is especially fond of reading about bad things happening to children, but these readers obviously exist. I recently found myself at the garage sale of a woman whose outgoing book collection consisted mostly of titles by the likes of Jody Picoult, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Caroline Overington as well as a vast array of so-called misery memoirs. The subtitles were universally distressing, and the covers that didn’t feature the figure of a lone child in the distance featured bleached, close-up photographs of unsmiling blonde innocents. Gathered together face up on a picnic blanket, it looked like a massacre.

2011-04-02T14:22:00.000+11:00

Clearing sale, "Mintara"

2011-03-28T15:05:00.006+11:00

Footy jumper, $2

Like many little girls, my daughters aren’t all that into fine art and they aren’t all that into football. But they are into impressing their dad. So when he took them to see the Ron Mueck sculptures at the National Gallery, they looked at everything very carefully and even made informed comments, such as “I know it’s a boy because it has a penis.”

When they accompanied him to a football game – to a match that just about brought him to tears - my seven-year-old obliged him by memorising and then excitedly reciting to me the phrase, “Jack Riewoldt kicked ten goals.” In fact, she memorised it so well that some weeks later, when a friend saw her wearing this jumper and commented that she must be a Richmond supporter, she responded by saying, “Jack Riewoldt kicked ten goals.” “Is Jack Riewoldt your favourite player?” my friend asked. “I don’t know,” she shrugged.

2011-03-25T18:42:00.007+11:00

Second-hand wedding dresses,
The Bargain Box, Riddells Creek

There are things that are often said but which I will not say. I will not start a sentence with the words Women of my generation… or As a mother… or I know it's clichéd, but... because these phrases strike me as cheap groundwork. I will not use the word successful to describe a person, only his or her actions and accomplishments. And I will not invoke the phrase politically correct or politically incorrect because a phrase that has been so lovingly adopted by both the avant-garde left and the ham-fisted right couldn’t possibly have any meaning left. Needless to say, I will not use the word pre-loved when all I really mean is used or second-hand.

2011-03-22T17:40:00.003+11:00

There are things that even an op shop can’t sell. Last week, this dumpster at the side of a Vinnies store was full of unsaleable clothing. Today, it was full of unsaleable books and magazines. I was tempted to ask the staff if I could go through the dumpster’s contents. After all, there are things I won’t pay for but will happily take home for free. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask - turns out there’s a limit to how cheap I’m prepared to look in front of a complete stranger. Who knew! And as I walked away a recycling truck arrived, backed up to the dumpster and emptied it.

2011-03-22T17:36:00.001+11:00

Nola's Bric-a-Brac, Canterbury

2011-03-20T18:24:00.006+11:00

Most of the time, when a business leases new premises, it takes great pains not to be mistaken for the old business. After all, a café doesn’t want to look like a hardware store, a hardware store doesn’t want to look like a hairdressing salon, and a hairdressing salon doesn’t want to look like a real estate agent. But an op shop will move into an old petrol station with a minimum of fuss.

2011-03-17T14:24:00.003+11:00

My plasticware collection,
purchased from various op shops
$1 - $2 each

Whenever I pull out my reusable containers at a Chinese restaurant, a waiter sees what I’m planning to do and hurries out the back to fetch me some disposable take-away containers and a plastic bag. “Thank you, but I prefer to use my own,” I say.

At a Vietnamese bakery, I handed the woman serving me an old plastic bread bag for her to put my new loaf into. She started laughing and said, “Recycle!” Then she shook her head, still laughing, and as she slid the loaf into the bag she said again, “Recycle! Recycle!”

When I asked a middle-aged woman in a milk bar if I could have my hot dog without the paper bag she exclaimed, “But it’s only paper! It’s not like it’s plastic.” “Still, I’d prefer not to have it, if that’s okay,” I said. “Look,” she returned, indignant, “it’s easier to eat this way. You just peel the paper back, see?” I didn’t know what to say to that.

2011-03-11T08:40:00.001+11:00

2011-03-09T09:46:00.010+11:00

Top, $18.75

It’s not that the people working in op shops don’t know the value of things - after all, the only value inherent in an inanimate object is whatever we ascribe to it - it’s that their pricing doesn’t necessarily reflect that of the marketplace. I once saw a mug on sale at an op shop for $4. Considering how attractive the mug was, this didn’t strike me as particularly expensive until I turned it over and saw that its original price was $2.99. And I know of one op shop where the ladies are so fond of Big W’s many styles of sequinned and beaded tops they sell them for $6-$8 while non-sparkly Ojay and Witchery tops sell for $3-$4. Quite often, these pricing discrepancies work in my favour. But the staff at the Salvos store in Kyneton clearly saw exactly the same value in this top as I did. Damn.

2011-03-06T11:23:00.006+11:00

2011-03-02T13:51:00.003+11:00

Sandals, $4.99
Salvos, Diamond Creek

I bought these sandals for my six-year-old and to my surprise she actually loved them. But after just one wear a strap came loose, the glue holding the lining in place having become brittle with age. I told her I would take them to a shoe man to get fixed, and upon hearing this my eight-year-old piped up, “You mean a cobbler.” I stood corrected, and it occurred to me that the only people for whom the word cobbler trips off the tongue are the very old, who came of age in a world where having things mended rather than cheaply replaced was a fact of life; and the very young, who are still immersed in their fairytale world.

2011-02-27T19:01:00.015+11:00

I dream of New York op shops...

image via psfk

image via here be old things

image via Dumbo Books of Brooklyn

2011-02-27T11:18:00.010+11:00

Barkins top, $6

Many of us are guilty of treating someone who doesn’t speak English or who is hard of hearing as if they're a bit stupid. Not on purpose, of course – it just sometimes slips out in a moment of frustration or impatience (some of you might be thinking “Cut out this us business, I never do it,” and I tip my hat to you).

At an op shop last week, the old dear behind the counter decided she’d had just about enough of the colleague who was putting out clothes in all the wrong places. As this colleague went to hang some more tops with the dresses the old dear exclaimed, “They’re tops! They’re tops!” and then added “You wear them over pants!” The colleague didn’t react but if she had, I dare say she would have been well within her rights to say, “I'm 70 years old. I know what tops are, Beryl.”

2011-02-25T18:18:00.002+11:00

Hunter Gatherer, Melbourne

2011-02-19T18:24:00.015+11:00

Tarzan CD, $2, Vinnies, Sunbury
Brother Bear, 99c, Salvos, Watsonia

I didn’t set out to turn my daughters into Phil Collins fans. But even I get carried away with the opening sequence of the animated feature Tarzan, which is set to the pulsating rhythms of the song Two Worlds. So even though the girls adore the Tarzan soundtrack, I stopped short of buying them the cassette tape of No Jacket Required when I saw it in an op shop. But I couldn’t resist buying them the soundtrack to Brother Bear. Hey, what harm can it do…

2011-02-15T14:09:00.009+11:00

My boyfriend and I both tried to teach our eldest daughter to ride a bike. My stock-standard advice – based on something someone must have told me when I was learning - was to turn the handlebars in the direction you felt you were falling in. This was not my boyfriend’s advice, and in fact he often raised his eyebrows at me whenever I said it.

The years passed, and the kids around us – cousins, neighbours, schoolmates - one by one learnt to ride a bike. Some of them had it all figured out by the age of three or four. My daughter lost interest in trying to ride without training wheels and became interested in other things. She left her bike untouched for what seemed like two years.

Then, last September, we went and stayed with some friends in Corryong. There was a bike lying in the driveway of their home, and while our backs were turned my daughter picked it up and started riding it. Just like that, at the ripe old age of seven.

Bike, $15, St Paul's Op Shop, Gisborne

2011-02-10T18:18:00.004+11:00

2011-02-09T17:02:00.008+11:00

Milleni handbag, $5

When I went to pay for this handbag at an op shop, the woman at the counter looked it over inside and out. “Oh, you’ve nabbed yourself a bargain there. It’s a Milleni,” she said meaningfully.

I liked the bag well enough - Milleni or not - but now that I am the proud owner of a Milleni bag I tend to notice other Milleni products when I'm out and about, mostly in country gift stores.

Suffice it to say, the bag wasn't actually such a find. In fact, I now wonder whether that woman was really a Milleni fan or if she'd merely had a quick read of the label during her inspection...

2011-02-05T11:17:00.006+11:00

To start off with, my microwave was already a bit trashed. During the shift to our new house, the liquid crystal in the display panel somehow dispersed and then disappeared. Ever since, I've been inputting the cooking times blind. But hey, I can do that.

Then I dropped the turntable while cleaning it (I knew cleaning the microwave was a mistake) and it smashed on the floor. I didn't think to keep the broken pieces for matching purposes, so for months I brought home replacement turntables from op shops only to find they weren't quite right. Who knew microwave turntables came in such a variety? And when a turntable isn't quite right, it tends to go off-kilter and stop spinning, so you have to keep an eye on whatever it is you're heating. Honestly, how much more white trash could a microwave get?

Finally, two weeks ago, I walked into a Mornington op shop and found the right-sized turntable with the right-shaped hollow in the middle of it for my particular microwave. Yippee!

Of course, I would never have gone out and bought a new microwave (that would have been one more microwave ending up in landfill) but I was sorely tempted to buy a new second-hand microwave if I'd come across one before coming across this turntable. But only if was $5 or less.

Microwave turntable, 50 cents
Three Legged Chair

2011-02-02T12:47:00.017+11:00

Flags that have found their way to an op shop

Last Wednesday, it was as if the streets were full of state motorcades. But no, they weren’t motorcades; just scores of ordinary Australians driving around with flags attached to the sides of their vehicles.

Are we really prouder, more us-and-them and more showy about it than we used to be? Or have businesses merely found a new way to flog cheap tat to us on an annual basis and we’ve blindly followed them into this new world of product-driven patriotism? Of course, Australian flag merchandise has always existed; but as kitsch for tourists, not expressions of self-love.

These days, supermarkets and two dollar shops start filling up with Australian flag thongs, shorts and hats within days of the new year. And it always takes me by surprise: I still expect the red polyester lingerie and heart-shaped balloons to be next.

* The Herald-Sun hat, coming soon to an op shop near you! (But of course - there are millions of the things.)

2011-01-29T21:34:00.007+11:00

Where exercise equipment goes to die...

Outlook Markert, Mornington

Where doll heads live on...

St Paul's Op Shop

2011-01-26T16:11:00.004+11:00

Three Legged Chair, Mornington

2011-01-20T22:59:00.006+11:00

Book, 50 cents

My daughters are experienced theatre-goers on account of the fact we have friends who are performers and their father writes plays. But you wouldn’t know this about the girls to look at them. So when we turn up to yet another show that has swearing and sexual references in it, an organiser will invariably accost us in the foyer with a word of warning.

The sexual references tend to fly over the girls’ heads: they might as well be watching monkeys in a zoo. As for the swearing, well… Between fringe theatre, contemporary singer-songwriters and their parents filling in the blanks, my girls are actually well-acquiainted with just about every swear word under the sun. But that doesn't mean they swear. On the contrary, when my seven-year-old spied this book in an op shop she shook her head laughing and said, “Why would anyone want to read about bad girls?"

2011-01-15T11:54:00.018+11:00

Sandals, $6

Whenever I see a pair of striking shoes on a woman’s feet, one of the first thoughts to cross my mind is the pleasure she must have taken in purchasing them.

Over time the shoes will have become scruffy and she will no doubt have seen her fair share of bad times in them,
but to my mind that doesn’t diminish the fact that at one point, the shoes made her day and had her imagining the good times ahead.

2011-01-15T11:48:00.004+11:00

Used CD, $4.86 plus postage,
Amazon Marketplace

I’ve always been Popular. I’ve never felt Popular, but apparently I am. Every so often I’ll think something I’m interested in just might be a little outré and I’ll excitedly go looking for it in Alternative. But nope, it’s always in Popular.

2011-01-14T13:08:00.004+11:00

Animal Rescue Op Shop, Deloraine

2011-01-11T21:26:00.004+11:00

Link: Girl with a Satchel

AVOIDING TEMPTATION: I recently found this vintage wool coat in an op shop, and it brought back a lot of memories for me. Not because I’m of a similar vintage to the coat, but because I used to buy a lot of vintage clothing. I once had such an extensive collection of vintage clothing that my sister, who is an actor, would raid my wardrobe whenever she needed costumes for a show.

But my love of vintage clothing once stopped me from making friends. Or it didn’t - who can say for sure? – but what happened was this: For about four years I worked as an usher in the city. Between the matinee and the evening performances, I would try to get to as many city vintage clothing stores as I could. One night, as I made my way back to work for the evening shift, I noticed my fellow ushers sitting in assorted configurations at various cafés and restaurants near the theatre. It suddenly occurred to me that in four years, I hadn’t once whiled away the hours between shifts with a colleague. I hadn’t once had dinner with a colleague. For four years I’d been so determined to get to all my favourite shops before the start of the next shift I’d failed to get to know anyone.

Another downside was loving the clothes too much. Revering the clothes, even. Every time I’ve moved house, a box has gone missing. Don’t ask me how, but it seems I can’t move house without losing a box. One time, the box I lost was the one containing three vintage coats and a dress. Oh, how I mourned the loss of those clothes! You’d think I’d lost an arm or a leg.

It would be very easy to replace those clothes. There are vintage clothing stores everywhere, and while vintage clothing can be expensive, it’s still generally cheaper than good-quality new clothing. But where would I draw the line? If I were to walk into a vintage clothing store, it would be all too easy to walk out with armloads of purchases. Cumulatively, it’d send me to the poorhouse. Not unlike a teenager at Supré, perhaps? So the only solution for me is not to walk into vintage clothing stores at all. A vintage piece once in a blue moon - which is about how often a vintage piece that fits me and suits me might turn up in an op shop - will have to do. And if I lose it? Well, easy come easy go.

RICH ENOUGH: I used to dream about being able to afford designer clothing, gemstone jewellery, antique furniture and an Italianate mansion in a hip, inner-city suburb. I used to dream about being rich, but I honestly don’t do that anymore. This is not to say that if a windfall came my way I wouldn’t live it up, but I’m not chasing that windfall in any meaningful way.

The dream of expensive clothing, jewellery and furniture went first. When I made the switch from buying new to buying (mostly) second-hand, I stopped coveting things and merely rejoiced in what I found when I went shopping.

Then the dream of the Italianate mansion went. My boyfriend and I recently purchased a fibro house in said country town. The house is very basic, but the garden is rambling and beautiful, and we have good friends in the area. So the quality of the house itself hardly even matters.

During the tense, week-long negotiation with the real estate agent over the price, I remember thinking, “We won’t get it. Nobody gets everything they want.” And I was as surprised as anyone that I should be thinking this way about a very basic house; that it was all I wanted after a lifetime of aspiring to an Italianate mansion.

Generally, the richer you are, the bigger your impact on the environment (the likes of Allen Ginsberg aside). Movie stars and old-money heiresses are often dubbed environmental activists when they plant organic vegetable gardens or purchase hybrid cars. But those same people can be seen living in extravagant homes, holidaying all over the world, and wearing new outfits to every event. The trappings of the good life don’t come at no environmental cost.

BEHIND THE TIMES: Recently, while reading about Mischa Barton causing upheaval on the set of The Beautiful Life, I thought to myself, “Why on earth are they still going on about this?” Then it hit me, and I turned to the front of the magazine. Ah, it was a year old.

Yes, I’ll confess: I sometimes read year-old magazines. And the reason for this is because I buy my magazines at op shops. Normally, I’m quite careful about buying only relatively recent issues that are also in pretty pristine condition, but this one must have slipped through the cracks.

Once upon a time, I thought there was nothing more thrilling that the sight of a latest-issue magazine, and nothing more deflating than the sight of an old one - especially the ones languishing in waiting rooms or take-away shops. Is there something to be said about a product that dates so absolutely?

I generally have a favourite high-end cover girl for years at a time (Winona Ryder in my teens, Gwyneth Paltrow in my twenties, Eva Green in my thirties). But I understand that the pleasure of a magazine, like my fixation with my favourite cover girls, is skin-deep.

I once visited an acquaintance at her home and was surprised to discover that she bought at least four different gossip magazines each and every week. This meant there were so many of them they were piled up on chairs and tables in every room of the house.

This acquaintance had never given any indication that she was so well-versed in the lives of celebrities, and my overriding thought was not that she was having a jolly old time reading about the lives of the rich and famous. My overriding thought was that maybe she was a little bit lonely.

A HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE: For a long time, the cheese grater I owned and which everyone I knew owned was the box grater or the handheld flat grater. Then IKEA came out with its “chosigt” grater, which fits snugly over a plastic container and is interchangeable with a plastic lid for storage.

It’s a nifty idea, but it isn’t an original idea. The Tupperware version, in signature Tupperware pale apple green, has been around since the 1960s. And you can potentially find either - or both - at an op shop.

image via Tupper Diva

That’s the thing about op shops - the product range might be unpredictable and unreliable, but it can span decades.

I was recently in the market for a new leather belt. I went to an op shop that had a good selection of belts and stood there, trying various ones on. Most of the belts were far too small. Some of them wouldn’t even go around my waist.

When at last I came across a belt that both looked good and was a good fit, I felt as if I’d finally stepped out of the past and back into the modern era. In the modern era, you see, the average woman is a size 14. Not a wasp-waisted, 1950s… Tupperware party hostess.

TOO MUCH CHOICE: Can a Brotherhood be too big? Maybe not a Brotherhood of Man, but a Brotherhood of St Laurence can. I recently visited the BSL store in Brunswick. It’s a cavernous place with racks and racks of clothing, a dozen tightly-packed shelves of CDs, and a large section of floor space devoted to furniture. I could have spent hours in there, but I didn’t. It was all too much.

When faced with a single shelf of CDs, I can flick through the lot in under a minute and maybe come away with something. Faced with a dozen shelves, I started to get a sore neck and mild nausea from squinting at all those spines. And my enthusiasm for working my way through the racks of clothing started to wane after one or two racks. I felt I couldn’t do the store justice, so I barely did the store at all.

There are a number of independently-owned bric-a-brac stores located throughout Melbourne that seem, from the outside, to be endless treasure troves. But at some point the endlessness of it starts to feel like a sort of sickness, possibly even evidence of compulsive hoarding behaviour.

I like small to medium-sized op shops best, the kind where you can take in most of what is on offer from the doorway, with only one or two sections that have to be rummaged through in a fastidious fashion.

The idea of choice is often presented to us as one of the boons of modern life, but there is such a thing as too much choice. Being “spoilt for choice” in a typical suburban shopping centre is one of the reasons I turned to op shops. I found I was never satisfied after being “spoilt for choice”. I would buy something, but then the next shop along would have something better, something cheaper, something more.

But I rarely leave an op shop feeling unsatisfied with what I bought. Instead, I feel fortunate to have found it.

PARTY FAVOURS: Two dollar shops and their ilk can end up being strangely expensive places to shop. A friend once went to a local two dollar shop to buy an assortment of party favours and ended up spending over $60. You see, really cheap party favours generally look really cheap, so you feel obliged to put at least three or four items into each party bag just to make the whole thing look half-decent. And it all adds up.

Many of the items don’t even do what they’re supposed to do. The recorders play only one note, the erasers don’t erase, the yo-yos aren’t possessed of enough weight to roll themselves back up their strings. It’s as if the manufacturers never even intended for these products to work, let alone last. And this -more than the cost - is what strikes me as obscene. It’s just a quick buck for them, a passing thrill for the kids, then a lifetime in landfill.

But you can bypass the waste and embedded energy costs of all this by buying your party favours from op shops. One year, I came across an assortment of glass sea creatures hanging from delicate glass bubbles. They were beautiful and priced at just $1 each. I suspended them in a tank of water and as each child left the party they were blindfolded and treated to a “lucky fish dip”.

Another year, I found a batch of polka-dot, glow-in-the-dark cardboard bow ties and put one in front of each child’s plate in lieu of a party hat. It wasn’t until many months later that a parent said to me, “Are you aware that those polka dots were actually little sperms and condoms?” So yes, do buy your Party Pieces (that’s right – bring on William and Kate’s wedding!) second-hand. Just maybe not the surplus stock from an old safe sex campaign.

SLOW AND STEADY: I can be the worst when it comes to impulse buying, especially if a local op shop is having a fill-a-bag-for-$5 day. On these days, I find myself guilty not only of buying things I don’t really need, but of buying things I don’t even want. After all, it’s hardly value for money if I leave the bag half-empty!

But I have learnt restraint when it comes to waiting until something I want appears in an op shop before buying it. There were a few false starts. After years of wearing silver I decided, one day, that it was time to make the switch to gold. Suddenly, I was desperate for a pair of gold sleepers. For months I checked out the jewellery cabinets of op shops and pawn shops, to no avail. So I gave up and bought a new pair from a regular jewellery store. Wouldn’t you know it? I then saw gold sleepers in three different op shops over the next few weeks.

By the time I decided I wanted a nice fire tool set, I had the waiting game down pat. The only heating in our new house was a wood burner, and I made do with kitchen tongs for over two years. There were plenty of unattractive contemporary fire tool sets in op shops, and plenty of beautiful but very expensive ones in antique stores. I held out, and held out, and held out. Finally, I found the perfect brass set for $15 in a Salvos store. It was bliss.

If my daughters want something, they ask for it and I tell them I’ll buy it for them if and when I find it in an op shop. They waited six months for roller skates, a year for a paisley-print dress (I have one, you see) and nigh on two years for a video of the third Swan Princess movie. What goes around comes around, so the girls generally get what they want in the end, but they have to wait indefinitely.

One of the unexpected fringe benefits of all this is that whenever my mother-in-law gives the girls back to me after a sleepover she says, “Your girls are so good. At the shops they never ask for anything.” This is not to say that the girls can’t be bad-mannered, self-centred and unkind. But they’re not particularly image-conscious and they’re not particularly materialistic. So far.

GIFT-GIVING: It’s not that some people are more deserving than others, merely that some people are a darned sight easier to buy for. So the contents of my present cabinet is weighted very much in favour of those family members who are possessed of an identifiable aesthetic; a sense of personal style.

I keep a well-stocked present cabinet because I do most of my shopping in op shops. In op shops, you can’t always find what you want when you want it. Instead, you have to keep your loved ones in mind at all times, and when the right item presents itself you snap it up and put it away until you need it.

Needless to say, stylish things are much easier to find in op shops than fashionable or faddish things. I’m yet to come across a Masterchef cookbook or Susan Boyle CD, and by the time I do it’ll probably be passé.

But things that were never really “in” will never really be “out”. I have a brother-in-law whose interests include band T-shirts, wooden masks, tiki mugs and cane furniture. I have so many things for him in my present cabinet at any one time that some of them languish in there for years. After all, just because he is more fun to buy for doesn’t mean he ought to get more presents than everyone else come Christmas.

For other family members, I have to be alert to whatever little titbits of information I can glean from conversation. For instance, my father-in-law recently revealed that he hadn’t even heard of the BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit. I happen to know he enjoyed Bleak House and most of the recent Austen adaptations, so I’ll be on the lookout for a second-hand copy of the Little Dorrit DVD between now and his birthday in June. If I can’t find one in an op shop, Dixons and Cash Converters stores or Ebay will be a good bet.

2011-01-04T20:03:00.010+11:00

Set of ice-cream cups and spoons,
$4.50, MS Shop, Melton

Sometimes it feels as though the world is against me. My first great love was the Cappuccino Gaytime, but after a few short months it disappeared. Somehow, I picked myself up and found the Mars Ice-cream Bar. Hell, I never knew things could get so serious! But then it, too, came to an abrupt end. Against the odds and despite my battered heart, a friend introduced me to Cherry Ripe Ice-cream in a tub; and it was love. The same love. But on the night I went out to buy my own tub, I discovered it had gone the way of the others.

2010-12-27T12:58:00.014+11:00

Many people tend to mention the words tattoo and regret in the same breath. But tattoos, if anything, speak of the futility of regret. We can’t change our past, whether we are physically marked by it or not, so why bother yearning to?

Before I became a confirmed op-shopper, I used to hang on to receipts for everything. I wanted to be able to change my mind; wanted to believe that nothing was set in stone. I kept the tags on new clothes until the very last moment before the very first wear, and read new books as if they were fragile artefacts. The receipts were all filed away, together with a repertoire of excuses for getting away with exchanges and refunds. But I never try to return clothes or books I've bought from an op shop. Well, I do "return" clothes and books to op shops all the time, but these returns are otherwise known as straight-out donations.

2010-12-20T21:16:00.008+11:00

2010-12-17T11:50:00.007+11:00

Django & Juliette shoes, $6.99
Salvos, Sunbury

You would think, from the fashion shoots in magazines and newspapers, that women wear nothing but ridiculously high heels all the time. Why can’t stylists alternate the footwear so that every other outfit features flat shoes? Especially if the models are wearing short skirts. I like short skirts, but short skirts with high heels strikes me as a bit slutty and try-hard. And it’s not that I’m against slutty and try-hard per se, merely that - like everything - it’s a matter of degrees. I generally go for a look that's hopefully best described as just slutty enough and maybe I'm trying, maybe I ain't; and who's askin' anyhow, bozo?

2010-12-12T19:41:00.005+11:00

Kilmore Op Shop

2010-12-12T19:30:00.000+11:00

Travel guide, $2.99

Children are so darned easy to please. Last summer we took the train to Sydney, and throughout our week there my five-year-old kept bursting out, “This is the best holiday I’ve ever been on!” This year, we’re taking the ferry to Tasmania. I gathered the children around the computer and showed them a picture of one of the cabins on board. “We’ll be sleeping in these bunk beds, and when we wake up, we’ll be in Tasmania,” I explained. Their mouths dropped open. “Whoa…” the younger one finally said.

I take a guidebook with me no matter where I go, ever since I went on a family holiday to New York at the age of nineteen and found I had no idea where to go or what to do with my precious free time. I had a mind to catch sight of some local hipsters, but I didn’t know where they hung out. My parents have never needed guidebooks, you see. They just plan their days in accordance with whatever pamphlets are in the hotel lobby.

2010-12-06T13:56:00.005+11:00

Videos, 50 cents each

My seven-year-old once came bounding down the stairs after deciding what to go to a fancy dress party as. She was holding a fox mask but she wasn't going as a fox; she was, in fact, going as Robin Hood.

I was proud as punch the day she managed to work the phrase “like Clara from David Copperfield,” into a conversation. What a wunderkind!

But then she went and told someone her favourite character in Beauty and the Beast is the stove. I mean, is the stove even a character?

2010-12-05T19:52:00.002+11:00

Then the dream of living in a hip, inner-city suburb went. This came about because my boyfriend’s new job meant a move to a rented house in a country town. As it turned out, it wasn’t just any country town, but a country town where I managed to make good friends. I was as surprised as anyone that I should suddenly have a host of new friends as I approached my mid-thirties.

Then the dream of the Italianate mansion went. My boyfriend and I recently purchased a fibro house in said country town. The house is very basic, but the garden is rambling and beautiful, and we have good friends in the area. So the quality of the house itself hardly even matters.

During the tense, week-long negotiation with the real estate agent over the price, I remember thinking, “We won’t get it. Nobody gets everything they want.” And I was as surprised as anyone that I should be thinking this way about a very basic house; that it was all I wanted after a lifetime of aspiring to an Italianate mansion.

2010-12-01T11:41:00.018+11:00

Top, $8

Since I only buy things second-hand, it would appear that I am not a supporter of the fashion industry. And it’s true that no emerging designers will be establishing themselves thanks to my custom: I simply don't buy the stuff. But I do appreciate the stuff, and in the decades to come, when the stuff has found its way into op shops and consignment stores and the designers themselves have long since given way to the next wave of new talent, I’ll be there.

2010-11-25T18:28:00.004+11:00

2010-11-24T08:26:00.003+11:00

15 litre stockpot, $9.50

The kitchens of fine-dining restaurants are known as high-pressure workplaces. But why all the pressure? Instead of bursting a blood vessel or yelling at an underling over some tycoon or socialite’s entrée, I wonder if restaurant staff ever stop and think, “Wait a second – it’s just a bunch of posh twats out there. Half of them are on expense accounts, half of them are on fad diets. Why do I even give a shit?”

I always feel resentful whenever I read about lavish Hollywood parties at which exquisite food is served. Surely celebrities don't maintain their size-zero figures by eating it.

2010-11-21T19:46:00.006+11:00

Separate Ways, $2.99

Young women have started calling me darl. More specifically, young women working as barmaids have started calling me darl. At 35, I’ve now overtaken the age of the average inner-city barmaid; but she goes on calling me darl. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

The singer-songwriters whose CDs I’ve been buying have also gone from being (much) older than me to (slightly) younger than me. But then, that was bound to happen. If it didn’t, then I'd have to concede that I was just listening to the same old stuff, in rotation and ad infinitum.

2010-11-19T16:09:00.003+11:00

Blouse, $1

I never fail to be delighted by the lack of self-consciousness shown by my children when it comes to learning the language. Every week there’s another blithely mispronounced word (and therefore... a new word learnt?)

This is one of my seven-year-old’s favourite items of clothing. After choosing it at an op shop, she held it up and asked, “Is it a brouse?” “Well, your Chinese grandma calls it a brouse," I replied, "but it’s actually a blouse.”

2010-11-17T21:07:00.005+11:00

Mask, $10

It’s such a relief when a man appreciates good novels; or cares about what he wears; or has a hobby. But best of all is when a man likes masks: masks are really fun to shop for. I happen to have two amiable brothers-in-law - from opposite sides of the family and opposite sides of the world - who are each partial to masks.

2010-11-17T20:56:00.005+11:00

Videos, 50 cents each

Imitations of reputable products often work just as well and/or look just as good as the originals. But is this applicable to art and entertainment as well? To think that a team of creative practitioners should go to the effort of scripting, designing, animating, voicing, and composing music for a movie just so it might be mistaken for another movie, or just to capitalise on the publicity for another movie, strikes me as a little despressing. Then again, my children haven't complained about the quality of The Secret of the Hunchback, so maybe I'll be buying copies of UAV Entrttainment's The Secret of Mulan and The Secret of Anastasia next.

2010-11-17T20:50:00.005+11:00

Dress, $2

I hate labels. I refuse to wear anything with a label. Don’t get me wrong; I love designer clothing. I just have to cut the labels out first because I have dry skin and labels scratch like a son of a bitch.

Many clothing manufacturers cut the labels out of their surplus stock before donating them to op shops so as not to cannibalise or cheapen their own brand. Personally, I’d be a bit miffed if what I thought was a dress from a respectable, mid-range chain store turned out to be an item by one of those short, male fashion designers who seem to hate women.

2010-11-11T13:59:00.007+11:00

2010-11-09T14:43:00.001+11:00

Water dumbbell, 50 cents

My boyfriend recently took our girls to a public pool, and he had a mind to bring along something that would sink so the girls could have a go at retrieving things from the pool floor. The hygienic-enough and heavy-enough item we came up with was a spoon. But at the pool, he couldn’t quite bring himself to start flinging the spoon around. In this day and age of specialised products for every activity and a raft of regulations for every activity, people might’ve looked at him askance. So as ridiculous as it seems to me that “dive sticks” even exist, that’s what I was on the lookout for the next time I went op-shopping. What I came back with was a “water dumbbell,” which also works when it's filled with stones.

I wonder if there’s a Water Dumbbell heiress out there somewhere…

2010-11-07T15:00:00.017+11:00

Shoes, $2

There's a woman I sometimes have coffee with, a single mother to eight-year-old twins, who says she doesn't have time to shop. She’s at work while the boys are at school, and when she takes them shopping with her they apparently won’t let her look for things for herself. So she wears falling-apart shoes and the same top most days. Needless to say, this doesn't sit right with me. No time to shop! So I found out her shoe size and told her I would be her agent for shoes. It isn’t as interfering as it sounds.

I was thrilled when I found these shoes. $2! If she paid me back by buying me a cup of coffee, I'd come out on top! The shoes had clearly never been worn, and as with most unworn shoes at op shops, when I took them to the counter the woman said, “They didn’t last long, I just put those out.” Being a successful op-shopper, you see, isn’t about finding the "best" op shops: it’s about visiting op shops frequently. Of course, not everyone has that kind of time on their hands.

2010-11-07T14:56:00.001+11:00

Candle holder, $6

The big supermarket chains are rather good at profiting from the sale of reusable shopping bags, but they aren’t quite so good at getting customers to actually use them. I thought it must have been an impossible ask: how can you make demands of customers? But then I went to Aldi. At Aldi, most customers walk into the store with their reusable shopping bags tucked under their arm and have no intention of taking a plastic one. It appears that bringing your own bags is a natural extension of knowing that you will be packing your own groceries, that you will be responsible for packing your own groceries. And all it took for Aldi to make this happen was to offer customers markedly cheaper groceries.

Having failed thus far to find an attractive set of hooks to hang my collection of shopping bags on, I improvised by buying this pre-loved candle-holder and taking off the drip guards.

2010-11-07T14:50:00.000+11:00

Coffee grinder, $10

I have to be forced into exercise to do it. And since I’m not about to pay someone to force me, I just have to force myself. I sometimes walk into town to pick up the girls from school. It’s a 5km walk, and once I’m halfway I can’t turn back because the girls will be waiting. But walking doesn’t do much for my upper body, so I stopped buying ground coffee and started buying whole coffee beans. This is the only coffee grinder in the house, so even if I want to forego my five-minute upper-body workout, I can’t forego my morning coffee (it goes hand-in-hand with the Nicabate) so what choice do I have but to stick it out?

2010-11-05T18:31:00.005+11:00

Fire tools, $20

I’ve been on the lookout for fire tools for over two years, ever since I moved to a house with a wood-burner as its main source of heat. I saw plenty of sets in antique shops for $50 or more, and plenty of sets in op shops for $20 or more, but I held out. I made do with some metal kitchen tongs, thinking a true bargain was just around the corner. Well, I feel I’ve turned that corner now, and there still aren’t any sets to be had for less than $20. But at least this op shop special appears to be old and brassy. And who knows? Maybe old and brassy is what I was actually holding out for.

2010-11-03T21:27:00.010+11:00

Recycled coffee sack chair
at Purdys Furniture

When a magazine floated the idea that Sydney’s coffee is better than Melbourne’s, I was aghast. Surely not! I mean, aren't we the ones producing all those column inches on our enviable café culture? Well, some time later I went on holiday in Sydney and finally saw for myself.

I’d long accepted that in my beloved home town, around one in four coffees is generally a shocker (watery shots and/or off-tasting, reheated milk.) What I didn’t know was that in Sydney, the quality is actually more consistent. The service is somewhat better, too.

Admittedly, I have my coffee an unusual way: a shot of coffee in a cup and a jug of hot milk on the side. In Melbourne, a barista will often stare at me quizzically, tell me I want a macchiato (I don’t), add hot water to the shot or second-guess me in some other way. Melbourne baristas seem to have either a superiority complex (they want to "educate" their customers) or an inferiority complex (they’re worried a 30ml shot doesn’t look like good value for money). Sydney baristas, meanwhile, just nod, give me what I asked for and probably don’t even care if they’re referred to as baristas.

2010-10-31T23:10:00.000+11:00

Childcraft set, $6

Op-shopping can be hazardous. There’s the mild kind of hazardous, such as the time I put my hand into the pocket of a pair of pre-loved jeans and pulled out a hanky that was stiff with someone else’s snot (vintage snot?) Then there’s the slightly more serious kind, such as the time a pile of books fell on my daughter’s head. I was reaching for a box of children’s encyclopedias on a top shelf, but unbeknownst to me, three of the volumes weren’t inside the box but were sitting horizontally on top. My then four-year-old was standing right next to me, and when I tipped the box forward the three volumes slid off and went plop, plop, plop onto her head; just like in a cartoon.

“Did your mama drop books on your head today?” her father said to her that night. And out of a sense of loyalty, or embarrassment, or a need to distance herself from the trauma of it all, she narrowed her eyes at him. “No,” she sniffed.

2010-10-25T15:57:00.004+11:00

Program, $1

Concert and theatre programs are one of those things that seem like an essential purchase for a magical half-hour or so, then quickly lose their lustre. When I was a teenager my aunt used to chastise me for wasting my money on all those glossy programs. “You’ll never look at them again, you’ll never keep them,” she said. “I will, I’ll keep them forever,” I protested. And for about ten years I was right. Then I was wrong.

An old program will sometimes catch my eye in an op shop, and if it’s for a show I know of I’ll generally be tempted to flip through it. Of course, I would never actually buy it. Buying a pre-loved program for a show I didn’t end up seeing would feel like falsely laying claim to a moment in time, while buying one for a show I did end up seeing would feel rather frighteningly like being mesmerised by my own past.

2010-10-24T11:50:00.008+11:00

2010-10-24T10:59:00.008+11:00

Spice rack, $5

Many people seem to feel it’s only natural to wax lyrical about the likes of Italian or Thai food but make fun of English and American food. Now this might merely be the glutton in me talking rather than the diplomat, but I never actually met a cuisine I didn’t like. Hell, I even like that Czech stew that’s served with whipped cream. And I never fail to be dazzled by the array of soups, ways with eggs, and sweet pies on offer the best American diners. One of my favourites is pumpkin pie, and I make it so often that I think I’ve managed to notch up a dozen or so first-time eaters at my kitchen table. The recipe calls for the classic mulling spices, as represented in this spice rack.

2010-10-20T21:30:00.015+11:00

Jumper and beanie set, $3

I find it churlish when people describe child-free women as selfish. The correct term is self-centred. It’s women who have children who are in fact selfish. Unless I’m mistaken, most of us have children because we know that becoming a parent is just about the best thing that could ever happen to a person. Of course, there’s a lot of day-to-day selflessness involved in raising children, but that doesn't make bringing into the world in the first place the opposite of selfish. After all, the planet's resources are finite.