Bargain Hunting

Well here we are again in the midst of the car-booting season. The car boot sale that myself and my partner go to during the summer is in Cheshire and about 10 miles from our home. It is held on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. My sister who lives in Yorkshire travelled down on Saturday to spend the weekend with us, so she came to the sale with us too on Sunday morning.

I love the serendipity of  the sale and we rarely go looking for anything in particular with a shopping list as inevitably you will come away disappointed. If you go with no wish-list then you invariably come home with a whole host of bargains that you did not know you needed.

I was delighted it find a Dualit Filter Coffee Machine today with chrome detailing for £5 and a lovely set of 4 white ceramic tea-light holders which were new and unused. These had the letters NOËL carved into them on one side and will look so simple and classic during the festive season when lit on a dark wintry evening. These were an unbelievable 50p for all four. I love finding things for the home above all other finds at the sales.

I bought 4 DVDs for between 20 - 50p and 6 home magazines: Ideal Home, Country Life, Country Homes & House Beautiful from April, May & June this year for 25p each. These still had the advert flyers inside them and looked unread.

Finally I found 2 T Shirts for my nephew. Both were brand new with their tags still attached and were £3 and £1. They had £25 and £6 on their price tags so I managed to spend £4 instead of £31. I will put these away for him for Christmas so that he at least has a few things to open along with the cash gift that I give to him now that he is in his late teens.

My partner came home with a whole host of things that he was delighted with. Included in his list of bargains was a Sony minidisc player complete with case and a minidisc that had some of his favourite music recorded on it for 50p. He also found a set of 5 new Sony minidiscs for £2.50 and 2 new 4 hour videotapes for £1. (I know - we are still living in the 80s in our house by having a video recorder/player but why give up using something when it is not broken and you have a certain affection for it)  He also bought 10 CDs for 20p each and a further 4 for 50p each so plenty to listen to over the next few weeks.

The one draw back is that it takes up a full morning to get round the sale and we both have a habit of scrutinising everything in case we miss something interesting. This means that the house and garden becomes a little neglected and I end up working late on a Sunday to try to gain some semblance of order in the home. However it is good exercise walking round the field and it is a an enjoyable way to  spend part of the weekend.