SOON, issue 30: Collecting & Selling Vintage + Organizing My Workroom

Welcome to Something Out of Nothing, a newsletter about meaning—making it, finding it, offering it. I talk about the writing life, teaching, thrifting, books, travel, obsessions and idle interests, and much more.

It was a summer dedicated to thrifting, antique stores, yard sales, and estate sales. I was looking for stuff for myself, my household, for gift-giving, and for my online vintage shop (more on that, below). Here’s a glimpse at *some* of the items I collected from May-August.

As you know, my mom and I road-tripped from Virginia to Montana and back, and we did in fact stuff the car until only a sliver of light shone from the back window. But then in August, I did a 43-mile yard sale crawl in northwestern Virginia. It was a wild, over-stimulating endeavor but worth it, basically a series of flea markets and yard sales along a country highway for, yep, 43 miles. Prices varied a lot; I think I spent under $300 overall. I came away with a ton of good stuff, including a reversible wool coat ($10), a chipped and chunky old kitchen bowl ($20), a pair of green chippy paint cement planters ($10), and a tattered and torn quilt that I’m commissioning the extraordinary Trish Overstreet to turn into a coat. I would do the 43-mile sale again in a heartbeat (I think), but I’d wear sneakers next time, because sandals were not the utility shoe for wandering around markets set up in grassy fields off the side of a rural highway.

(Also! I ran into one of my favorite video content creators, Amanda from Amanda’s Mercantile. She was extremely friendly, even as I hollered across the way to a friend while pointing in Amanda’s direction as if she herself were a good find, “Hey! This is that woman from the video!” Amanda was cool. I had no chill.)

For the past two years, I’ve been (re)selling vintage and secondhand goods. Sometimes it’s a hobby, other times it’s a genuine side gig. Sometimes it’s just an excuse to buy the beautiful & strange things I want to buy, hold onto them for a bit, then put them back into circulation in the world.

Intentional Assembly is my online shop. I focus on a mix of unusual and classic vintage homeware, books, and art. Recently, I posted several new/old items, including some from my epic summer of thrifting. For the rest of October, I’m offering a special 20% off discount code just for my newsletter folks: SOON20. Take a look for those early holiday gift ideas and/or late-in-the-year birthday people. (And if you see something from the images above that you’re curious about, just message me!)

I’ll be doing monthly-ish “drops” going forward. If you’re a SOON subscriber, then you’ll automatically receive those updates.

This is more a makeover in spirit, as there’s plenty I just don’t have time for at the moment. My main focus is clearing space and creating functionality, because the room has primarily been treated as a storage area, rather than the workroom it's supposed to be. Theoretically, I’m supposed to be using this space to photograph, post online, and store my inventory. But it’s also a space for crafting and art-making, otherwise I’ll continue taking over half of the kitchen table.

The checklist:

• give away the twin bed

• get (some) stuff off the floor

• put extra table in middle of the room for project work

• create a sitting area near the window

• replace red picture ledges with thrifted acrylic ones

• hang bulletin board over desk

• hang more art around the room (as a form of storage)

This is a zero-dollar ‘makeover,’ you could say. I’d love to paint and replace the blinds, but that’s not in the budget right now (monetarily or time-wise).

Ultimately, I was able to complete the whole checklist. However, half of the room has become a staging area: in the interim between starting this project and finishing this issue of SOON, my mom and I have decided to open a vintage booth together. So, there’s still quite a bit of stuff stacked and stored toward the back of the room and try as I might, every photo I take of it just comes out looking haphazard rather than the curated chaos it truly is. Still, I think you can see the overall vision I’m intending. It feels really good to have the space in a more functional condition, with the important surfaces cleared and actual movement possible from one side of the room to the other.

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