These Shoes Were Made for Walking...At A Budget Price!

For my birthday, back in August, a friend gave me $24 cash. I’d been griping that I was short on black shoes, and she wanted me to buy some….mostly, I presume, to stop me from griping!

I spent $15 of the $24 on a set of mirror-surfaced candle sticks I saw at an antique mall. I used the remaining $8 to buy three sets of shoes.

Used shoes.

I’m pretty sure that the much-touted female obsession with expensive shoes is largely a cultural myth. Certainly, we are told constantly, in movies, books and shoe ads, that women will lie, cheat and steal in pursuit of the latest six-inch designer stilettos, but I don’t know anyone who actually fits this profile. But even without such extremes, you can spend a whale of a lot of money on shoes…..if you buy them new.

I’ve got a cranky knee, so I pass on the high heels. But even with flats, you can easily shell out $50 or more on any shoe other than old-fashioned sneakers.(Canvas topped, rubber-soled sneakers, not megabuck “athletic” shoes, which IMHO have become one of the greatest rip-offs around, right up there with bottled water.) Just finding enough good flats to go with brown pants, black pants and jeans can blow your budget fast.

So I buy used shoes. I keep an eye open for “mint” condition shoes in classic styles that I can get for $2 to $4 a pair. (These are actually harder to find than heels, open-toed shoes and sandals.) Here’s a pix of the three pair I bought with my “birthday” money.

All name brands--Easy Spirit, Pappgallo's and Partners. I got one pair at a charity resale store, and two pairs at an estate sale. Total price? $8.00.  I estimate these shoes would have cost me well over $100 if I'd bought them new.

Paying a tenth of the price for gently used shoes will really help your bottom line. Where do you find them? 

Consignment and resale stores: This is a fairly pricey source—you’ll get shoes for 30-50% of the cost new, which is a little high in my book—but certainly worth checking. 

Yard sales: An excellent source in terms of price. Check sales in an area where the people will wear your kind of shoes; you’re not going to find many designer pumps in rural areas, or trendy super-high heels in retirement communities. To save time, simply ask the seller if they have anything in your size; it makes no sense wandering around looking for size10 shoes when the lady (or gentleman) of the house wears a size 8. 

Church sales and charity stores: Probably your best bet. Churches and charity organizations will often have a larger selection, but quality can vary. Goodwill, for example, usually has plainer, less fashionable shoes, but great prices. My favorite clothing and shoe store is a place that sells used items to raise money for needy mothers and kids. They have a sale about once every two months and from the quality of the items available, a lot of well-off people donate.

By the way, if you’re leary of sticking your feet in shoes someone else has worn, sit the shoes out in the sun for a day or wipe them out with alcohol. (And remember, new shoes bought in a store may have been tried on by a dozen different shoppers.)

Finally, never buy anything just because it’s cheap. If you wouldn’t be tempted to buy a pair of shoes at full price, pass on them. Buying things just because they're cheap is a sure way to end up with a house full of stuff you don’t like and won’t use. 

Got any good stories about where you found great shoes at a low, low price? Tell us about it in a comment!

Decorating: Can It!

Can you make a kitschy chunk of plaster look like stone?

Yep. And the result is a nice looking piece of decor at a cost of $5.

I have a liking for the Greco-Roman look, a taste that’s hard to satisfy in rural North Central Texas, where “Country” and “Victorian” are the standard. So I take a good hard look at anything that resembles, even faintly, what I want.

“Faintly resembles” was exactly the description of a small plaster pedestal I saw at a recent garage sale. The shape was right, but the finish was a horrific blend of turquoise blue with orange “antiquing.” Bad, really bad.

But the price was $1, and I really wanted a plant stand to put by my French doors. So...

I took it home, scrubbed it off with a brush, then headed for WalMart, where I picked up a 99¢ can of flat gray paint, and a $6 can of “textured” paint, which gives a sort of sandy finish.

I used the gray stuff to cover up the blue-and-orange finish. (Tip: make sure you always turn something this ornate upside down and spray it from bottom to top as well as top to bottom. Otherwise, you’ll miss a lot of nooks and crannies.) I now had a flat gray pediestal. Better, but still not what I wanted.

Now for the textured paint. Used half a can. Light spray, right side up, upside down, and when I was finished, I had something that look so much like stone I was almost surprised to find it was still light enough to pick up easily. No more turquoise and orange.

I have my pedestal. $1 purchase price, $4 worth of paint. I went to a local statuary store and found concrete pedestals that weren’t nearly as good-looking for $40.

Just keep your eyes open. Chair seats can be recovered. Finishes can be repainted. Ugly pictures can be discarded, and the nice frames reused. Etc, etc.

Here's the original, gray-sprayed, and finished pedestal. The orginal finish looked even worse than it appears here.




A closeup of the detailing. Amazing, what a little spray paint can accomplish.

Buying Used: It All Comes Out In The Wash

People can be so delightfully illogical.

The other day, I was telling a friend of mine about a nice, high-thread-count sheet set I’d bought at an estate sale. Her reaction?

“Ugh! You’re going to sleep on sheets someone else has used?”

I grinned and pointed out that whenever she stays at a hotel, she sleeps on sheets that thousands of people have used. And every time she eats at a restaurant, she’s putting the same silverware in her mouth that countless people have had in theirs, eating off the same plates and drinking from the same glasses.

You should have seen the expression on her face as these facts sunk in. I may end up getting a bill for therapy.

The point is, something doesn’t have to be brand new to be usable, it just has to be clean.

I have both a dishwasher and a washing machine and they work just fine, thank you. So I have no hesitation in buying things that someone else has worn or used. (Okay, I do draw the line at underwear!) I avoid items that are chipped, worn, torn or stained, and whatever I buy I wash before using. Shoes in “like new” condition I swab out with alcohol, and let sit in the sun for a day. (By the way, you do realize that shoes bought"new" in a store may have been tried on by dozens of people, right?)

I fry my eggs in a pan someone else once cooked with, I drain my lettuce in a strainer that cost me 50¢, both thoroughly washed when I got them home. And the queen-size sheet set that would have cost me $50 in a store cost me $5 instead, and looks like I just brought it home from Macy’s.

Ironically, there’s another “used” item on my bed right now, one that I’ve only hand-washed--very, very carefully-- once in ten years. It’s a yellow and white quilt, and it is actually just a little ragged around the edges. Got it that way. Not surprising, since it’s probably been more than a hundred years since my great-grandmother made it. Old, a little ragged and definitely used....and I saw one just like it in an antique store the other day with a $250 price tag on it.

I wonder what my friend would say about that!

A Little Paint, A Little Imagination....

You don't have to spend a lot to decorate your home. It's incredible what you can do with yard sale finds, plus a little paint and imagination.

Case in point? Here's a little table I found at an estate sale. Half the veneer was peeling off, but the shape is lovely, with beautiful hardware. It cost $2.

I found an "oops" can of primer paint at Home Depot. A full gallon of high-quality paint, tinted mauve, marked down because the color wasn't right. Cost? $5.

I stripped off the peeling veneeer, gave everything a light sanding, and used perhaps a tenth of that gallon to give this little table two coats of paint. Here's what it looked like at that point.

Now, I really didn't want a mauve table, so I took perhaps a third of a small squeeze bottle of terra cotta craft paint (87¢) mixed it 3 to 1 with water to make a glaze, then coated the table. When that dried, I took perhaps a third of another craft bottle of dark copper and dry-brushed the table to "antique" it. Then I scrubbed the very dirty pulls with powdered cleanser.

Here's my table now, in the entry of my house. Total cost? $2 to buy the table, 50¢ worth of the mauve paint, 30¢ each of the two craft paints for a total of $3.10.

By the way, the little box shown cost $1 at a yard sale. The Polish crystal-and-gold candlestick was 25¢ at a yard sale. The central glass paperweight was $2 at a yard sale, the red vase was $3 at an antique mall, and the greenery was free. (A guy who got a promotion at the company where I once worked got a huge floral basket from his wife. He hated it and was about to throw it away. I took it off his hands. The darn thing probably cost $200.) So the total cost of everything you see here was $9.35. A little paint, a little imagination and a visit to a few yard sales!