estate sales habit

The great thing about having the children move out to be on their own is that they welcome the overflow of our household for that first apartment. Visits to our far flung family include loading up a few useful items or a box of the stuff left behind in our attack and closets. Inevitably, each child reaches a point of saturation and cautions, “don’t bring anything. I don’t have any more room.”
The other great thing about having children move out is that I get to check out the garage and rummage sales in their cities. Sometimes I end up taking back as much as I took.
Like the church rummage sale in St. Louis I visited with my son. A four-foot wooden, rotating bookshelf caught my eye and would not let go. It awkwardly filled the back of the mini-van.
Before a holiday visit to St. Louis, I thought about that purchase and determined I would not return home in a mini-van loaded down with garage sale finds. Instead of checking out the garage sales I decided I would only check out the city’s beautiful parks and gardens. My son lives right across from the city’s largest, most beautifully arranged and maintained city park and he is within walking distance of the Botanical Gardens.
Besides the flowers, trees and fountains there are interesting people like the charming young man in a white judo being chased by several mean looking dude wearing black face scarves and black judo suits. They all stopped at the film director’s command and prepared for a retake.
In the Botanical Garden, we puzzled our way through the maze of a hedge, took pictures, fed and petted colorful Capri’s as long as my arm and watched the seven or eight brides holding their trains away from the grass as they floated past us to pose for their next picture. The rose garden seemed to be a favorite place as was the reflecting pool. One bridal party lined up in front of the pool while another party posed on the bridge in the background of the first’s picture.
Following the afternoon of elegant sights and miles of walking, my husband took our son to watch the Cardinals lose a baseball game. My daughter and I shopped a bit. I bought nothing and my daughter found only one shirt. We spent the rest of the evening vegging out with books and TV. I was doing very well with my resolve.
Sunday we visited a church and an area restaurant. Before changing out of our church clothes, we decided to check out of a series of open houses — only to be diverted by an ‘estate sale today’ sign.
“Let’s run by real quick and see what they have,” I said. It was Sunday afternoon after all. I was sure everything would be picked over and prices slashed to clear out the left-over junk.
All I bought was a can opener to replace our dull one. However, my son and daughter both came away with a five-drawer wardrobes. My son cleared up a lot of clutter in his apartment when he replaced his landlord’s loaner dresser and stored his hanging winter clothing in his wardrobe.
My daughter’s cluttered up the mini-van. It crowded us right out of our seats. We took it home anyway. It just wasn’t the holiday to begin breaking a tradition.