Reader here, and I think most people are familiar with the “Three R’s” – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Most of my recycling comes through taking my empties to SARCAN. I don’t have recycle bins near my building, so it’s hard to go through all of my paper plastics and glass. Though I do recycle some plastics and glass. It just takes a bit of hauling to get those items to the bins. And my Honda Civic isn’t the best for lugging stuff around.
What I DO is reuse. Specifically, I do like to make use of things I find second-hand. Sometimes it’s stuff I have around the house that I can find another use for, like containers. But what I do a lot of is keeping an eye out for bargains, when I’m out and about, whether I’m at thrift stores, garage sales, or, as was the case over the weekend, at big giant flea markets, like the one that took over the Gallagher Centre Curling Rink on Saturday.
There’s a little bit of anything and everything there. That’s what makes second-hand shopping so much fun… you never know what you might stumble across. Everything from old vinyl, CDs and cassettes of music that you might not be able to find on streaming. Or books that you’ve been looking for forever, that randomly pop up.
This time around at the flea market, there was a ton of stuff I could’ve blown some cash on, but I exercised a bit of self control, and spent the princely sum of five whole dollars on two Blu-Ray movies and a DVD.
The previous weekend, I was out garage saling, when I came upon a couple of items that I snapped up.
One was a fancy bag to contain my fake Christmas tree. Year after year, I pull out my tree, the raggedy cardboard box it came in gets more and more trashed. I can only hold it together with so much packing tape. This new box is big, made of durable material, snaps closed, and can be cinched tight, to be packed away. And I got it for 20 bucks. Not bad!
But the big score was later that day, at another sale, when I came across a practically new deep fryer. I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while. I use my air fryers a ton, and they’re great. But there are some things, like French fires and onion rings, that are just better deep fried. I asked the guy how much he wanted for it… $15! Needless to say, it has a new home. I can’t wait to try it out!
I also get a lot of books second-hand (the price of books nowadays is ridiculous, and I’m not an e-reader kind of guy), and if I find some decent clothes for cheap, I’m all about that, too. I even got my favourite and most-worn Rider jersey at a second-store!
Are you a bargain hunter, too? What are some of your favourite second-hand scores?
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