Sunday, April 10, 2011

Thrift Store Treasure and a warning



We have a GREAT thrift store that opened about a year ago in our city. It supports the local homeless shelter. It is run very well by volunteers and a few paid people. It is clean, well maintained and new stuff comes in on a daily basis. This place is really big and has a really quick turnover rate. They have furniture, clothes, sewing machines almost weekly, you name it, they probably have it.


Well, my daughter loves to go in there because she can almost always find name brand shirts for $2 and has quite the collection of clothes that are almost brand new and has had to pay almost nothing.


Yesterday I was in there and got all of this quilting thread for $15. I would have paid $15 for only two of the spools of thread, plus shipping. What a deal!


I took the spools out and set them on the steps to take a picture of my treasures. Normally, I would have dumped them on the floor, but for some reason, I picked them out of the bag instead. Weird.


Anyways, when I was done, I looked down at the bags and this is what I saw in the bag!


No, it wasn't quite this big, but it was about 2 inches long. Good thing I didn't dump the bag, or it would have crawled away into my house :) We don't have cockroaches here in Northern Californa, unless you have them as pets. I used to have a whole bunch of these hissing cockroaches as pets in my class when I taught first grade. They are way cool. I got some more when I first started teaching high school. But, I really don't want any wild cockroaches in my house. Thanks for the extra bonus with my thread!


I bagged up the thread and stuck it in my freezer to kill off any eggs that are in there. I think I will leave it there for a week, just to be sure :) Better safe than sorry!


Warning: Double check bags from the thrift store from now on...unwelcomed guests may be hitching a ride home with you!

1 comment:

Gayle said...

I had a similar situation...someone donated three boxes of fabric to our quilt guild and delivered it to our home. I gave them a receipt for taxes and a nice thank you note. When I opened one of the boxes, several large insects wriggled out. My husband went after the insects, and I took the boxes outside...the fabric/bug situation was so bad we didn't save any of it...just put it directly in our trash can. You would have thought they would have noticed before donating the fabric...oh well!:-)