Fleas and Spiders

I have been such a slacker on blogging and I do apologize! On the plus side, I have so much fodder for new blogs, I have to make a list to cover it all! I'm going to keep today's blog on the shorter side because I got a second wind today and don't want to lose it. I just came upstairs from vacuuming the basement. If you are both blessed and cursed to have a basement, you may have had a similar experience as I just did.

I vacuumed for a few reasons. First and foremost, when Banjo stays at my house, my mother has confined my sweet hairball to the basement for the simple reason that he sheds like you would not believe. Unless you also have a black lab. Then maybe you do believe. Anyway, I was being threatened to being skinned alive if I didn't vacuum the area around his cage and food/water dish.

Second, I've been verbalizing getting into shape and losing weight and blah blah so I needed to take some action on that matter, which means doing the 30 Day Shred in the mornings again. I'm a tomboy, but spiderwebs still gross me out...so I had to clear a nice area and electric outlet for that. Once you start cleaning one area, it seems silly and lazy not to keep going , so I did.

When we were kids, we kept our toys in the basement and we played down there pretty much everyday. My mom finished it off and we spent usually two days in the summer cleaning the basement. We would get rid of any toys we were no longer playing with and my mom would vacuum it. We've obviously grown out of that phase and the basement has been pretty lonely until Banjo came along. It was high time for a vacuuming.

I gave it a once over and found enough spider webs and remnants of meals, I began checking of my shoulder for this guy. Fortunately, he did not show up. While I have been out of full time work, I have been gathering up things that are no longer of use to me to sell at a flea market. I've been putting a collection of such things together for years and now I finally have a chance to haul it off to someplace to be rid of it.

Flea markets are awesome. First, they are pretty complex to do successfully. You have to understand that to make money on a flea market, you need to be willing to part with your belongings for a low price. Ask yourself what you would be willing to pay for something. Second, try to figure out your clientele. People are more often looking for cheap deals (think gently used kids stuff...why pay a lot for something your kid will only use for a few months and then outgrow?), collectors (not of the serious kind, although I'm sure one or two might come by, but people who collect movie memorabilia,etc, and a group of people I like to call destroyers. Now some people might prefer to call destroyers artists, but I am not an artist, and I am a flea market destroyer. I want to find stuff that I can use for reenacting, like wooden bowls.

Too often people try to make money on a flea market selling items of actual value. Turn to eBay for that. A flea market is a place where one man's trash is another man's treasure. A little money is nice, that's why you are doing a flea market and not just throwing your stuff away. More importantly though, you are passing off your items to people who can use them. What a great way to recycle!

Now, I love to go antiquing. Faith and I spent a day a few weeks back wandering around Point Pleasant's antique shops. It's really fun and, to me, it's kind of like a touch and feel museum where I can buy what's on display. The problem is most of these people know what they are selling and are charging what the items are worth and then some. Flea markets are like scavenger hunts and they give me a chance to be like Mike and Frank from American Pickers.

When I finally get around to selling my stuff at a flea market, I'll be sure to post some pictures of the neat stuff I find while I am there!