Garage sales offer the allure of unknown treasure

WHEN it comes to poking through someone else's decluttering efforts, garage sales are an endless sense of fascination.

ADVENTURE AWAITS: You never know what you are going to find when you go to a garage sale. Picture: Supplied

VINTAGE wrestling videos, tatty surfing magazines, CDs that were hot in the 1970s, succulent plants, old Cat in the Hat books and dodgy coffee machines.

You guessed it, I'm a garage sale.

They are like pop-up op-shops and there's something irresistible about cycling, walking or driving down a street and seeing those hand-drawn signs on the inside of flattened out cereal or appliance boxes, proudly heralding all manner of possible treasure within.

Forget the pricey stores, second hand shopping is where my heart lies.

De-cluttering (or as my husband, the Kilt man, calls it, throwing out perfectly good things you might use one day although you have not so far the last nine years) is one of my favourite things to do.

My next favourite is sorting out through someone else's.

And since moving up to the Northern Rivers, I've been hitting lots of them thanks to online social media sites which sometimes make finding good stuff earlier.

On Sunday we went to Byron Bay to check out an old door to suit our house renovating project and after buying and lashing it to the car roof and heading on the way saw several more a garage sales in progress.

In my experience, there's always a table with one really ugly vase, some mismatched cutlery, old bowling club mugs and a food processor that might have last worked when Keating was prime minister.

Underneath the table there's a stack of fake-leather bound Readers Digest condensed novels in a box optimistically marked '$10 the lot'.

Next to this will be a rack with some amazing 1990s fashion hanging listlessly on wire hangers, including a man's shirt so loud you need earplugs just to look at it.

Meanwhile, I'm browsing through boxes of old kitchen stuff, looking for unusual biscuit cutters and retro cook books.

Sometimes you find wonderful items for which you pay tuppence and other times no matter how hard you scour the scene, there's nothing worthy of your attention.

The other weekend I was out early cycling to get the morning paper when I saw an alluring sing indicating a garage sale down a side street.

There I met two more cyclists who were off to ride 70km before hitting a cafe, considered some plants (which darn it, were bought before I made up my mind, never mind how I would get them home on the bike), marvelled at how stiff and purple the wetsuits worn 30 years ago were and enjoyed some unavoidable but highly amusing eavesdropping, courtesy of a couple of senior men who probably should consider getting a hearing test.

Swooping is a skill you need at these event, for she who hesitates is lost.

Which is why after garage-sale sauntering in Ballina, I was tootling through an op-shop there the other day, the sight of two miniature model surf-vans, complete with boards on top and peace and love signs on the bodywork caught my eye as they passed from donor to shop volunteer for pricing.

Before you could say DukeKahanamoku, they were mine.

Best $2 I've ever spent.