I love buying things secondhand. It makes me feel good keeping things out of landfills, and getting products that were only used once and then tossed. Sometimes I think about doing that challenge where you don’t buy anything new for a year.
Anyway, people always ask how I find awesome stuff when I’m out thrifting. Some thrift stores aren’t necessarily better than others, it’s just all about how you search. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and here are my biggest tips:
When we moved into our current house, it came with this rustic wooden table in the backyard—I loved it; we could fit many people around the table and used it in various cookouts. Over a couple months, it began to sag on its legs through rainstorms, icy cold and blistering hot weather, and about a month ago, was totally on the ground.
We left it there for awhile, as a testament. At one point I lifted it up and realized it had killed all of the grass underneath, so we quickly shoved it to the side of the yard. But, what now? What will we eat on outside during the summer?
Enter the pallet table—last Sunday morning I got a Craigslist email alert saying there were several pallets nearby us, and so we took Ryan’s truck and hustled over to grab them. There were four.
