Cleaning Brass and Other Metals

In a household bursting at the seams with everything under the sun, I expected to find Brasso.  Seems like there's always a can of Brasso tucked away somewhere in every house, garage or workshop.  I was a bit bothered when I couldn't find any, so I pulled out every substitute I could find.  And I decided to try them all.  I had always thought that only Brasso could clean brass, and it seems like I'd tried other things in the past.  But today is a new day, so I started with the two products

Live Public Auctions

For some reason, I think of laundry when I think of live auctions. It must be my Mom's fault somehow. She loved the Saturday auctions, and once bought a gas dryer for $5. She used that dryer for the next 20 or 25 years. What a bargain! And bargains like that are still out there, if you happen to be sitting in the right place at the right time. (In good conscious I have to take this moment to tell anyone considering bidding that auction houses rely on this belief to keep their doors open.)

Public Auctions are great places to get a few bucks out of something you might otherwise have to pay to store or dispose of.  And fun places to buy something really cool that you weren't planning on buying, and

How to Sell Your Stuff

Before we ever went to our first auction we began exploring the whole re-sale issue.  Because I had already figured out that selling our stuff would be at least twice as hard as finding and buying it. (Yep, figured that out all by myself!)  We are by nature cautious, planning-ahead kind of people.  Either that or super lazy, pessimistic, don't want to get out there and try and fail kind of people. Whichever.  Either way, we knew we had to learn the ropes of selling before we started buying.  And since we are the proud descendants of pack rats, this was not a problem.

1.  Yard Sales.  Being both curious and lazy, when I want to find the best way to do something, I usually ask as many people as possible how they do it.  Especially the people who seem to be doing it right. (Translate that to mean they are actually making money at it.)  So during our first few storage

Storage Auction Schedules

I find the whole scheduling thing a challenge, but my first two resources are the local newspapers and the Internet.  In most cases, those two can both be found in the same place. So I go online to find the legal notices in the local papers. Free computers are available for scheduled use in most libraries, which have the advantages of being both quiet and air-conditioned.  But I like to spend hot afternoons in front of my computer, and I usually do my research from my Lay-Z-Boy in the den. 

The big newspapers will usually let you read the postings on-line, and I like to copy and paste them into one document.  I usually start with the LVRJ (gosh, what a great affiliate link they would be!) because they've got such a user friendly web-site.  Then I check the legal news publications.  These publications experience a different financial environment and often make you buy a copy or a subscription.  (I really hate the ones that

Gotta Love Your Pearls and Buttons - Literally

I might have called this post, "Things I Learned While Preparing for Our Yard Sale." Or..., "Things I Never Knew I Always Knew About Stuff."  (Especially my stuff.)  It surprises me sometimes the things people will tell me that I never knew I always knew. 

Little gems of knowledge, like..... 
If the mommy cats are out hunting, who is babysitting?  Daddy cats, of course! 
Or, what will a bird do if you put a strange chick in her nest?  Feed it.  Why, what would you do? 
Or, why do some mommies take care of other people's babies?  Duh.  Because ALL babies