ok, so, my always frugal mother has all of a sudden become a thrift store/goodwill nazi, believing anything she finds is a “collector’s item.” I admit to often buying clothes and old albums and various odds and ends from goodwill, but it is becoming a little much. dolls, laser disk (records but they look like cd’s), stuff like that. I am now being asked to look up stuff on ebay to find out it’s value. is this normal when moms get older? my mom is otherwise fairly hip.
Abuse Godwin’s Law, much?
:rolleyes:
My mom doesn’t do the Goodwill think (thank Og) but she is a major pack rat and her pack rattery is getting worse as she gets older. For her it’s paper stuff. Clippings, magazines, newsletters, newspapers…every horizontal surface of her home (including the washer and dryer) has a stack of papers, file folders, magazines, pictures and other assorted stuff. Stacks…everywhere you look…it makes me crazy.
I’m just happy I don’t have to visit very often. She lives close and usually comes to my place because I cook.
It’s a very tempting thing; I bought a glass candy dish in a charity shop during my lunch break today; I’m about 80% sure it’s Vaseline Glass - it’s the right colour - the price was just one pound - if it’s Vaseline Glass, it’s worth at least ten, possibly more; if it’s just green glass, well, it’s worth about what I paid.
I do OK buying the occasional CD from charity shops too, and selling on the Amazon Marketplace (although the fees are steep, and it’s a cutthroat marketplace).
But yeah, it’s ever so tempting, and I can see how it would be really easy to be a poor judge of what is valuable and what isn’t.
That’s basically it. I don’t want my beloved mother to become velvetjones mother (not ment to offend). I take preventive measures for myself by keeping my house clean, throwing away magazines after I read them, and never buying newpapers.
Sounds like my grandmother. There are papers everywhere. If she goes to the dollarstore, and sees something cheap, even if she only needs one or none at all, she’ll buy 30. Then these things pile up.
My mom did the same – not so much with Goodwill stuff as it was with office supplies. Gah, I could probably open up my own Staples with all the stuff I’ve found in the den :eek:
She was a child of the Depression, has always been a pack-rat, and could never bear to part with anything. I dread the day when we no choice but to clean out the house.
I rarely take her shopping anymore because now anything shiny or glittery catches her eye and she has to have it. I refuse to contribute to her clutter.
I won’t even shop Goodwill anymore. They’ve gotten insane! I mean, I went there once and they actually had a couch they wanted $1100 for!! Everything there is so expensive anymore.
You have no idea what Godwin’s law is, do you? Hint: this ain’t an example of it.
<ahem>
Since the OP links two, utterly unrelated ideas, sweet old ladies shopping at Goodwill stores & Nazism, & does not even wait for the Thread to develop, the OP is not merely an example of Godwin’s, but (as I stated) an abuse.
That is, it takes the principle of Godwin–i.e. that pointless comparisons between Nazis & utterly unrelated things are inevitable, & creates a gross & flagrently excessive display of an abused metaphor.
I would like to note that I was not literally comparing my mother to nazis.
It seems like this is the only real problem here. Just show her how to do it, make her write down the steps, and let her know that you think her new hobby/business is wonderful, but that it’s hers. She can do the web searches herself.
Don’t let it bug you.
On this Board, we go on like this all the time.
And it’s not so strange for you mother to hunt for items this way.
Before my Mom started having ill-health, she went to rummage sales all the time.
Before my mother was diagnozed with Alzheimer’s, she and I would spend my days off from work cruising the numerous “junky” stores in our area – not Goodwill, but the places that sell overstocks, damages, and the like.
They can be great for books if you’re a bibliophile like me, btw.
Anyway, we’d leave these stores with bags upon bags of stuff I knew deep in my heart she didn’t need and would never use – stuff like out-of-date health/beauty products, domestics, some weird decoration she could hang on the front door, office supplies :rolleyes:, cheapie kitchen utensils, etc. It was as though she was brainwashed by the Gods Of Excessive Spending On Stuff You Don’t Need the minute we strode through the doors. I was never able to make her understand the theory “don’t buy it if you can’t use it”. Ergo, I let her go on her merry way, and now there’s a house full of stuff to prove it.
It’s one thing if you’re scouring thrift stores for stuff that, upon researching, could be valuable as a resale. It’s another thing if you’re buying stuff for the sake of buying it.