The Cluttered Loft

05/05/2018

We have expanded! The Cluttered Loft now has a presence on Pinterest, Etsy and Poshmark. Please come visit!

02/21/2017

We're back! The Cluttered Loft was closed for a few weeks for renovations, but we are back from that "vacation" period. Please come and visit. We're listing new things now.

03/18/2015

ANIMAL LOVER, PART 2: FOR THE BIRDS

In the bird family, Linda has had chickens, ducks, and geese. But she's had more of the caged varieties. When we lived on Lake Holly, she had up to 28 parakeets at a time.

That's nothing compared to the finches she had in Pensacola: more than 100 at one time. She also had love birds, java rice birds, and cockatiels.

She got a parrot for her daughter, who named “him” Charlie. Charlie was unhappy and unfriendly until we gave the bird to our sister Margaret in Orlando. Margaret put Charlie in a cage with another bird and soon discovered Charlie laying an egg. Obviously, Charlie was a female and wanted a companion!

The experience with Charlie made Linda interested in determining the gender of birds and other not sexually dimorphic animals (not obviously male or female to external inspection), including reptiles as well as birds.

After much searching, Linda found a sexing device. It was expensive, poorly made (fell apart), and gave inconsistent results. After many years and much trial and error, Linda developed the sexing crystal. She gave some to her local bird-breeding friends, then started selling them online.

The sexing crystal is amazingly correct when used as instructed. Her vet even tried it on his pregnant wife, and sure enough the prediction was correct! They had a girl.

We've now sold over 1,000 sexing crystals. They've gone to many different states and also other countries, including Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malta, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand – so far.

01/26/2015

This Is the Famous Miss George. Mascot of Oakes & Associates Insurance Agency and Queen of all she beheld. 1986 - 2002. A more beloved dog never existed.

01/26/2015

ANIMAL LOVER, PART 1: MODELING POODLES

Linda is the real animal lover in the family, which has led us to offer some interesting pet items in The Cluttered Loft. For years she's been partial to toy poodles. She volunteered for Coastal Poodle Rescue of Melbourne, Florida, when we lived in Pensacola.

Her first toy poodle was George (female). George went to work with Linda every day at her insurance agency and became quite the celebrity in Land O' Lakes, the town in Florida where the agency was located. There was even a birth announcement in the newspaper when George had puppies.

When we visited Kentucky at Christmas, George obviously did not enjoy the snow. However, she liked the rubber boots Linda bought her even less. She stood stock still in them and refused to take a single step. When Linda decided to sell them on Ebay, she used Sparkey, another toy poodle, to model them. The buyer was pleased with them; apparently his dog liked them better than George did.

More recently, Sparkey modeled a red devil Halloween costume for The Cluttered Loft. Look for Sparkey soon in a nice Samsonite pet carrier!

01/24/2015

MOTIVATION

On a recent overnight buying trip, we had the opportunity to acquire a bin of audiobooks. We enjoy books and audiobooks! Linda likes to listen to the mysteries while she irons and does other work. Among the usual mysteries and other fiction, we found a series of six Christian mystery-romance novels that Beverly had already read (on paper), which sold shortly after listing.

There were also a number of motivational and inspirational nonfiction tapes, some of which were familiar to us.

One of the audiobooks was THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD by Og Mandino. It sold within hours of listing on eBay. The buyer shared his story with us: He was given the book more than twenty years ago by his father . He had listened to it “more than a hundred times.” Then it was lost. Now he wants it for his four daughters “so they can enjoy and benefit from the teachings” as he has. That's why he'd been looking for it and bought it as soon as he saw it. He thanked us for having offered it for sale.

And that's the kind of story that motivates us to continue looking for unique things to offer in The Cluttered Loft.

09/08/2014

2014 Highway 127 Yard Sale

After reading about it for years, we finally got to experience the “world's longest yard sale” this August. It lasts from Thursday till Sunday and extends from southern Michigan to northern Alabama.

Joining up with Highway 127 at its closest point to our home, we started “saling” in Frankfort, Kentucky, on Thursday morning. We had planned to go south from there, but changed our minds due to the weather forecast and headed north.

We stopped at dozens of sales in Kentucky before visiting briefly with Linda's daughter that evening. (She's in law school at Northern Kentucky University.)

On Friday morning we had some navigational difficulties but finally starting finding sales again somewhere north of Cincinnati. We met so many nice folks along the way and had lunch at a lovely church in a small town, Eaton, Ohio. In the same town, we saw a sign in front of the humane society that they needed dish soap; of course, Linda stopped at the next store we saw and got some for them.

The next morning we shared breakfast with a friendly couple who had been missionaries for 35 years in – of all places– Lima, Peru! Linda spent 2 months in Lima in 1990 when she adopted her children; Beverly was there with her for one month. Our new acquaintances were in Lima at that time, and we enjoyed reminiscing about our experiences in the southern hemisphere.

Participation in the sale was particularly strong in the town of Celina, Ohio. Practically every home in their “millionaire's row” had tables of merchandise in the front yard. We were so impressed with their huge, beautiful lake!

By midmorning on Saturday, our minivan was pretty full, and we were pretty tired so we headed back to Louisville. Our puppies were so glad to see us when we picked them up from their boarding school! And we had lots of new inventory to prep for The Cluttered Loft. But we were already looking forward to our next “buying trip” in September.

06/11/2014

BENDERS
Ever use those pink, spongy curlers? Remember the ones from the 70s (Farah Fawcett style) that were heated and could be bent into any shape?
Sometimes the most unlikely item will be most appreciated!
We had (inherited) an unopened box of Benders, those heatable, bendable spongy curlers. We doubted anyone would want them in the 21st century, but found opened boxes for sale on ebay.
We listed our unopened box and sold it within 24 hours to one of the happiest buyers ever. She'd been using them since the 70s and had despaired of ever finding any more new ones.
Here's what she had to say (Feedback): "Just as represented and a miracle that I could find one.I'd buy another one now."
That's one of the things that makes selling such fun.
Anybody have another box for her? It's been since 10/20/08 that she got ours.

06/05/2014

06/05/2014

Customers Can Be So Generous!
Our most appreciative and generous customer never actually bought anything from us. Serge, who lives in the USA, contacted us because a friend of his, living in Russia, was looking for a vintage music magazine from the 1940s. We had the magazine for sale. She thought that there was an article in the magazine about an obscure musician. She was writing a paper on that musician for her master's degree. Serge wanted to be sure the article was in our magazine before he bought it to send it to his friend.
We found the article in an old issue of ETUDE magazine. It was a large, fragile magazine on wartime paper. Instead of selling him the magazine, we scanned the article and emailed it to him for his friend.
It turned out that Serge is a jeweler with a store on Etsy at the time. In appreciation for our small gesture, Serge sent us a beautiful sterling silver necklace!
Thanks again, Serge

05/07/2014

Here are some items currently available in our store.

05/07/2014

The most enjoyable part of our online business is hearing from buyers who are happy with the things that they've purchased from us.
The first heartwarming response we got was from a man who'd purchased a Wizard of Oz numbered music box for his wife. It played "Over the Rainbow." (You can see a photo of the box below.) It still brings tears to our eyes when we remember hearing from him.
We had inherited the box from our sister, Valerie, who was a big Wizard of Oz fan. There are some things that you inherit that are treasured and just must be kept. There are other things that are not sentimental and not needed or that make you sad when you see them. Valerie had told us that if something of hers made us sad, we should get rid of it. (Questionable advice, maybe, especially in the short term.)
That box made us sad, and it had been packed away for years. Finally we decided to sell it to someone so that it could be out and enjoyed. It was hard to list it for sale, but Valerie would have been so happy for the man who bought it.
He had been looking for one just like it for years. When he and his wife were on their honeymoon, they saw one like it while window shopping but were short on money and decided against buying it. Afterward, he regretted that decision and looked and looked for one like it. There were similar ones available, but they had different pictures on top or played different music. His wedding anniversary was coming up when he started looking again, and there it was in our store: the very box that his wife wanted. He said that he was so excited to find the box that he could barely press the "buy" button. He was so happy to be able to give it to her on their anniversary! She was overjoyed. And, of course, we were also happy to hear their story.
So even if you have special feelings for some things, if you are just going to put them away, you might want to consider whether they would bring more joy to someone else.
And if you have an interesting story about something you've bought, please share it!