Local woman admits to being ‘junkaholic’

By Jeanne Spitler Guerra

Saturation has been reached … to the point of bursting. 

Not one more single solitary trinket, knickknack, tchotchke, picture, print or objet d’art will fit into my house. Not one more piece of furniture, large or small. Not one.

But does that stop me? Nope. I’m still addicted. The husband swears I’m related to Fred Sanford, the television junkyard man played by Redd Foxx. Perhaps I am. 

Throughout the course of our 40-some-odd years of marriage, (some odder than others), I have picked up hundreds of ‘treasures’ and ‘finds’ from garage sales, estate sales, thrift shops, trash bins and curbsides. And I happily nestled them all into our East Dallas domains, our first home just south of Gaston and now our last home north of Easton, rearranging here and there to somehow make everything fit.  

The husband doesn’t understand the obsession. Doesn’t get it. Rolls his eyes heavenward each and every time. Calls my finds “scrap crap.” But some of you understand, don’t you? It’s an addiction. A disease. It’s the affliction that means I can’t pass up a secondhand sale no matter how hard I try. (Not that I try very hard.) The husband calls it “junkaholism.”

Perhaps it’s because I have been successful on many of my adventures into the piles of others’ castoff goods. I took a quick four-minute inventory of my house this morning and found more than 65 proudly displayed items, (including furniture), procured secondhand during the last decades. And that’s not counting the crates of quality Fisher Price toys I’ve found for the grandchildren to play with or the Christmas decorations up in the attic. 

Some of my more spectacular finds include a rundown dollhouse that I stripped to bare bones 10 years ago and turned into a Christmas Gingerbread Dollhouse — a State Fair Best in Show winning dollhouse. It proudly comes out of storage once a year.

Another find was two black wire chairs thrown out by a neighbor down the street about a dozen years ago. Turns out they were 1950s designer chairs worth about $200 each. Yea! Sold to a friend who had matching décor.

My current favorite is a Mickey Mouse telephone found in a small Clovis, N.M. thrift shop for $30. Amazon is listing it at four times as much, and it works. The grandkids love to push the red button to see Mickey point to the receiver and in his cartoonish voice tell me I have a phone call. 

I have end tables, chairs, old games hung on walls, two heavy wooden swivel stools in my workroom, and my computer sits on a 50-year-old wooden table from the cafeteria at my boys’ school. For years we used the $20 purchase as a dining table. Still sturdy, still great. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.  

The old cowboy boots in the bookcase were worn by somebody in East Dallas. The basket of dress-up clothes the grandkids play with belonged to people we may have passed on the street. I even have a huge artist’s canvas a neighbor threw out because it belonged to the scoundrel of a husband who left her … or so she said. I’ll gesso over it and paint something light-hearted.

Another favorite find is a small cream-colored planter of two swans gracefully intertwined found while on a walk. It was in a cardboard box in a pile of junk waiting for the monthly bulk trash pickup. I have enjoyed it for about 20 years. 

This time of year, the sales are plentiful. Our sweet elderly neighbor across the street has gone to Heaven and left a house full of knickknacks and tchotchkes, so much that as of this writing, the estate sale is on its sixth day with bright neon pink signs pointing hundreds of other junkaholics to our street. I have been over there three times, but only bought two little Christmas ornaments, a clear Pyrex butter dish (mine broke three years ago) and yesterday I found a five-episode DVD of “Annie Oakley,” the TV series I watched as a kid. What a treasure! And for only $1.

Throughout the years, I have learned a valuable trick to my secondhand shopping. I take only my car keys into the estate or garage sale or the thrift store. That way, I think about what I want to purchase all the way back to the car to get the needed cash. More than once, I have changed my mind on that short walk. The husband wishes I would leave my wallet at home and think about the purchases overnight. But if I don’t LOVE it, I don’t buy it. Unfortunately, I love a lot of stuff. I mean, seriously, what’s not to love about Annie Oakley?

 Another trick is that I don’t buy souvenirs on our trips, but instead buy a small keychain or trinket that we hang on the Christmas tree. That way I don’t have shelves of useless souvenirs, but instead once a year we relive our travels as we decorate the holiday tree. Happily, it takes us hours.

 One of my particularly spectacular finds was years ago heading back to work after lunch. Passing a church, I saw a man carrying two chairs to the dumpster. I did a quick U-turn and asked if I could have them. “Sure,” he said. “Church is buying new plastic ones.” He was kind enough to put them in my car and I smugly took home the two vintage Bentwood chairs still in use today in my kitchen nook. EBAY offers the same bistro chairs for anywhere from $40 to $90 each. Mine were free.

 Throughout time, some of the treasures have lost their luster in my eyes, so those items have been passed on to friends and relatives or sold or donated. But, joy of joys, they leave some open spaces I can fill with new stuff! 

 I have loved every minute of the hunt. I think that’s the fun, isn’t it? The hunt. The chance that something special once owned by someone else might be just the perfect cast off for me. A valuable or unique trinket or item. Something someone once loved. And it will be loved once again.

Even though every shelf is crammed full of finds, I still haunt the neighborhood sales and nearby thrift stores, especially those on Garland Road. It’s there I found the dramatic mid-century modern lamp in my den for $9, the quirky addition to my vintage Mickey Mouse collection for $1.50, and the volleyball-sized decorative sphere of perfectly matched seashells that sits in a special place in my bookcase. It was a mere $12 and it’s really quite extraordinary.

All treasures, all loved, and all because I have a disease. One for which there is thankfully no cure. I am a lifelong junkaholic and proud of it, even if the husband rolls his eyes every single solitary time I find something new to love.