You’re reading Home Truths, a newsletter from me, Susy Smith. I am many things: a parent of grown-up kids, a dog owner, a gardener and a compulsive mover of vases (I worked for years as a stylist). I am also a writer/editor and former Editor-in-Chief of British Country Living Magazine, for whom I still write a monthly column.
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The mantle-piece in my friend Jo’s home - an old oak beam cut to size
You know that great feeling when something – an item of clothing or a piece of furniture you like - suddenly turns up reduced in the sales? You buy it immediately, applauding yourself on your circumspection in holding off when it was full price and feeling very smug you’ve nabbed a bargain. We all have these moments, but for most of us they are rare.
The fact is that bargains are there all the time if we can just be bothered to look but many of us don’t because we are, as they say, cash-rich, time-poor. I certainly fell into this bracket when I was working full time. I always seemed to be chasing my tail, with barely enough time to turn one task around before another six needed doing. So, the easy thing to do was just pay for whatever I wanted or needed regardless (to some degree) of the cost rather than give time over to searching for better options.
I am no longer in that position and these days have to be much more careful about how I spend my money, thinking twice before I have a splurge, although I’m not sure my husband and daughters would agree that I always manage to exercise self-discipline: I have been known, usually after a few glasses of wine, to rashly buy expensive tickets for a concert or a fashion item I’ve been lusting after for some time.
If you just don’t have that option however, it becomes your default position to always look for, and make good deals on pretty much anything. One of my sisters-in-law is amazing at finding the cheapest holidays, and flights to travel out to see her family in Spain or indeed anywhere. I can never believe it when she tells me what she paid. But then I realise she always chooses the no-frills option, searching for cheap deals that mean she is travelling at some ungodly hour of the night, in a seat she hasn’t chosen and with just a small carry-on bag. She is just the same with shopping: at Christmas she turns up with lovely presents that she has collected through the year at off-price retailers where the prices are routinely 50-60% lower than normal.
My Queen of Thrift though, is my friend Jo. She has a fantastic eye for a bargain and can usually get prices even lower by determined haggling, which she does nicely but firmly and always with a smile on her face. Originally, this was borne out of necessity but these days it is simply that she decides what something is worth in her world and works to get it for that price.
She shops at the top end supermarkets but knows which days to go in when they will be sticking the reduced labels on at the meat counter. Her freezer is thus full of the best cuts of meat, all secured at knockdown prices, popped in there on the day of purchase and just waiting for her husband to fire up the gas barbecue from where she has served us the most delicious meals including an excellent Beef Wellington.
She is immensely stylish too and always looks a million dollars in well-cut dresses and matching shoes. I am astounded when I admire an outfit and she tells me she procured the items from local charity shops. It’s not only her dress sense I admire, but the fact her home is sparely but beautifully furnished. Whereas I am a bit of a hoarder and have stuff on every window-sill and shelf, Jo’s home is carefully curated.
She saved up for and spent a small fortune on a sofa she really wanted, but the knubbly oatmeal ‘rugs’ on the stripped floorboards are cheap carpet offcuts, she bought for a song and then had bound round the edges bound to finish them off and make them look much smarter. I’m planning to copy this idea when we redecorate our sitting room and have the floors stripped and painted.
The other idea I am copying from her is that of her fireplace. Years ago, she and her husband Kenny had a wood-burner installed into the old fireplace in their cottage. They cleaned the bare brick in the recess and painted the chimney breast a soft yellow. But the bit I love most is the old oak beam used as a mantlepiece. When I admired it and said I’d like to do the same thing, she immediately offered to take me to a reclamation yard near her home in Sussex she knew had a good stock of similar beams. If I found one I liked, we could have it cut to size and the ends smoothed off. Sadly there was nothing suitable but, never daunted, Jo assured me we would find one elsewhere.
My next requirements were a shelf to display china in my utility room and two bedside tables for our newly decorated guest room. I fancied something vintage, ideally with a French or Swedish feel. The only issue was, I had very little space for a table each side, so they had to be small. Off we went to Ardingly Antiques Fair in West Sussex – a venue Jo knows well from her former life as an antiques dealer. Indeed, that’s probably when her good eye and knack of bargaining were learned.
It was a glorious day and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves mooching around looking at all sorts of stuff we liked but didn’t need. Then I spied a shelf: old, French and painted blue-grey it was just what I wanted. Out came the measuring tape and, voila it would fit! But it was more than I wanted to pay. Jo moved into bargaining mode, but the dealer wouldn’t budge more than a few pounds. Jo walked away determinedly as I scuttled along behind
“Aren’t we going to buy it?” I asked
“No, leave it till later when everyone is clearing up. Shell probably let it go for less then, rather than taking it back”
“But what if someone else buys it in the meantime?”
“That’s a risk you’ll have to take”
Who was I to argue? We carried on. Then suddenly Jo pointed and said,
“What about those for bedside tables?”
They were stools, but the ones with a central spiral core that one can wind up and down to adjust the height. I wasn’t sure and would never have even spotted them or considered them without Jo. They weren’t really what I’d had in mind. Jo talked to the dealer and came back to me
“He’ll do the two for ten pounds. At that price you can afford to buy them and just sell them on or give them away if they don’t work”
She was right. I handed over the money. We did see tables that were more what I had in mind but there were never two that would look right together or that would fit in the space I had. I was warming to the stools.
My new quirky bedside tables
We were walking along the next aisle and suddenly Jo disappeared round the back of one of the stands: she’d seen something. There, piled up were several lengths of old wood, some of them oak and one of them looked like it might be just what I wanted for my mantlepiece. The measuring tape came out again. It would work.
“How did you even see these?” I asked. “I would’ve just walked past without noticing them”. Jo just smiled because I guess she just has that knack of spotting items and seeing possibilities in things that others would pass by.
So now I have my wood for my mantle-piece – it’s sitting in the shed waiting to be fixed in place. Kenny has even offered to fit it for us! And I have two unusual bedside tables that fit perfectly where I want them and look really rather quirky. And what of the shelf? Well, we did go back and it was still there at the end. For once, Jo’s magic didn’t work. The dealer said she could take it back and sell it for a higher price in her shop so she was in no hurry to sell. Jo looked at my pleading eyes
“Ok”, she said “we’ll take it”. I know it went against the grain for her to let me pay more than she thought it was worth but “In the end” she said “if something is ideal and you think you’ll regret it later if you walk away without it, you just have to buy it”. The Queen of Thrift had spoken!
The shelf in the utility room: sadly the blue-grey didn’t work and I had to paint it white, but I love it and it fits the space perfectly
I’d love to hear about the bargains you have bagged. What’s your favourite vintage piece that you snapped up for a special price? Share it with me and your fellow subscribers or leave a comment on this writing and I shall respond
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Hi Sam, they are ceramic tiles. They're great aren't they? I fell in love with them years ago and was delighted when I got the chance to use them in my utility room. Sadly the company, who were based in Cornwall, no longer make them. They closed down the business about five years after I bought the tiles because they both wanted to retire.
Reading about your friend was like reading about myself. I even paid a fortune for a sofa that I had swooned over for years but everything around it was either out of a skip , free or bought second hand for no more than a few pounds. I get great delight out of finding a bargain. Loved that I’m not the only one out there who simply has to bag a bargain. My friends laugh at me when I tell them how I acquired an item . When I was a girl my mum and I used to go to jumble sales weekly from necessity and I guess that it’s stuck with me . x