sage philosophy: buying it used (the outdoor version)

What I didn’t know when moving to the Midwest is how much this region loves to rummage! I have never lived somewhere with so many garage, yard, church, tag, and rummage sales each weekend. In our city, most sales run Friday and Saturday, with a few starting on Thursday or running through Sunday. It’s a green mama’s dream come true, honestly.

I’ve had two “rummaging” strategies in my time here: Before Triplets (BT) and After Triplets (AT). I think they would be applicable to any WOHM vs WAHM/SAHM or someone trying to drive less in general. BT, I was working for a nonprofit a few miles from home and my older son was in daycare near my office. Fortunately, the distance between the two was through a nice semi-suburban community. I would frequently be leaving the office at 2 or 3pm on Friday and would snake my way through the town, stopping when I saw a sign on my way to one or more sales that I picked from craigslist. I would also look at where my meetings and lunches were on Thursday and Friday and see if I could throw any rummaging in without running over my lunch hour.

It was a bounty season last year: a like-new bike trailer that we use to take DS to daycare several times a week, one sale where I bought all of the 4T pants I’m ever going to need (Gap and Mini Boden, to boot), a Step 2 wagon and Little Tykes picnic table in perfect condition… Is it a bad sign that I still remember my bargains this fondly???

AT, of course, everything is different. Instead of a leafy ‘burb, I have the hit-or-miss sales of our city neighborhood. My strategy now is as follows:

• CL garage sales is part of my Google Reader. I don’t look at it all week, and then I open Reader in another window of my browser on Wednesday and start scanning for sales in my neighborhood. I open each of those in a separate tab. I also open a tab if there is a sale outside of our neighborhood listing something we really need.
• Babies willing, I make it to any of the Thursday or Friday sales.
• Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, I write down all of the sales I want to hit on Saturday and any open on Sunday, and then I rank them based on their ads (Baby clothes? Toys? Womens clothes in my still-postpartum size?) and their proximity to our house or our route to the farmer’s market.
• I’m lucky that my older son loves to go to sales, so he and I will grab a baby and go to as many as is feasible in our day. There are 7 on my list for today, 3 prioritized based on their ads/location, and I know we’ll see others that weren’t advertised on CL along our way that we will stop at.

Maybe I’ll take a photo of my bounty today, if it’s any good. I always bring a lot of cash with me, just in case, but find I rarely spend more than $10 across the weekend. No matter what, I only buy things we need because I have a stern anti-clutter policy in our house. But with growing triplets, we need a lot, especially in the realm of kids clothes!

sage philosophy: walk, but know your limits

I live in a Midwestern city that is totally focused on driving. There is scant public transportation. When we moved here from the East Coast, we chose our neighborhood primarily for its walkability, since that’s what we were accustomed to, but in a city designed for cars, I found myself often underestimating distances and setting out for walks that wound up to be unreasonably far or avoiding a walk because I was unsure of the distance.

My saving grace, especially now that I am doing all of this with a triple stroller, had been Gmap pedometer, but just this week I discovered that Google Maps now has a walking direction option in Beta that also estimates the walking time. I started off mapping the furthest distance I knew I was comfortable with — from my house to our preferred local coffeeshop, or 1.7 miles roundtrip. The library, Walgreens, co-op grocery store and post office are all 1.4 miles or less. Today, I saw a craigslist ad for a garage sale in our neighborhood that looks promising. A quick peek at the map shows me it’s 0.6 miles each way. Totally doable, and my first thought was that I would need to drive!

As the triplets get older, I plan to apply this principle more widely. If I park in a central location when I do need to drive, how many errands are within walking distance? Until someone released a hybrid minivan, at least.