Scrapped with I Heart Thrifting by Kelly Bangs Creative &
The Best Stories by Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs
Journaling reads:
Before I left North Carolina for the Peace Corps in 2011 I sold practically everything I owned.
I wasn't sure where I would end up when I got home and didn't want to pay for storage for three years... so everything had to go! I had been living on my own for several years at that point so I had a ton of stuff: a washer and dryer, full bedroom set, living room furniture, kitchen gear, a dining room table and chairs.
I was able to sell almost everything through word of mouth and on Craigslist (I don't even think Facebook Marketplace had been invented yet!) and I had a garage sale for all of the smaller things - clothes, tech gear, hobby stuff. In the end, everything I owned fit into my Honda Civic.
I packed the necessities into two large suitcases and headed to Macedonia. My service in the Peace Corps ran from 2011-2014. When I returned, I still had the two suitcases but now I had a husband in tow as well. After a few months in my hometown we ultimately decided to move back to Cary because it's a great place to start a family, I knew we could secure jobs, and I still had friends in the area.
Once we decided on a place to live it was time to furnish our first apartment together. We bought some stuff new - like the mattress and couch, but I ended up thrifting a ton of things as well. I was in my DIY era and had a lot of fun refurbishing thrift store furniture. I soon became a frequent flyer at The Habitat ReStore.
The item turnover was really fast, so I would swing by frequently to see what was new in stock and what was on sale. One such day I popped in and began walking the aisles, not really looking for anything in particular, when I came across this table.
Woah! I thought, I had a similar table before I moved. Upon closer inspection I realized it wasn't just a similar table... it was THE EXACT SAME table and chairs that I used to own.
I know what you're thinking... how could you possibly know that? It's not like it was hand made - it was a generic, mass produced table. Look closely - you see that red ink stain? That was me. One day in 2010 a red pen had exploded in my purse and in trying to clean things up I ended up making an even bigger mess. The finish of the table made it extremely hard to remove, so I just left it. And clearly so did the people who I sold it to because there it was right in front of me four years later.
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?!
We didn't end up buying it because it was wildly overpriced and the chairs were in awful shape, but I couldn't resist taking a couple of photos to remember it by. Perhaps I'll see you again, old friend. Only time will tell.
