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I’ve never been a fan of television, but it does pass the time when you’re on thethis is not me on the treadmill torture machine treadmill at the gym. What struck me this morning, though, as I sweated through my daily 34 (well, almost-daily) minutes of heart-enhancing exercise, was how %^&# TOXIC most television is.

Does it really enhance my life, my well-being, and my health to know, thanks to Late Breaking News for Those in the Know, that a 13-year-old beat his brother to death, with accompanying visuals of a soul-leaching public housing building? Or that some “star” has done something I’d ground my 11-year-old for (if I had an 11-year-old), and gotten rewarded with freaking HEADlines for? Do I gain a thing by watching two actors effuse over a kitchen appliance that does nothing a spoon couldn’t do (except of course, make the manufacturer rich and clutter the world’s kitchen cabinets)?

We won’t even discuss the talk shows (although I admit, I do tend to get sucked into Oprah if that’s when I’m at the gym 😉 ).

What’s wrong with a nice Animal Planet show. Hissing cockroaches at least are interesting. Discovery Channel may be talking about medieval sewage systems, but they’re not suggesting it’s normal human behavior to go swimming in it.

They don’t let me have the remote at the gym. You’d think, with what I’m paying to put myself through sheer torture life-enhancing exercise, they’d at least let me watch what I want.

Of course that’s not me in the picture above. If it were, I’d be lying on my couch eating bon-bons and reading. There’s nothing good on TV.

One of the worst parts of being retired from the consignment business (besides not getting first dibs any more!) is that you see something PERFECT for a shop…and then remember that you don’t have a shop anymore.

So, I decided I’d start a new category here on the TGtbT blog: “My Favorite Things”. They’ll be stuff that, if I did still have a shop, I’d buy, get, copy, make in a heartbeat. Continue Reading »

That’s what one potential shopkeeper wanted to know the other day. It’s a common misconception. Those looking at the business from the outside in, thinlosing moneyk They get all their stock for free so what’s the big deal about starting a consignment shop?

Yes, it totally possible for a consignment shop to go bankrupt. Sometimes they seem to go belly-up overnight. Even donation-only not-for-profit thrift shops can fail. And the rate of failure for buy-outright (BOR) resale shops is astronomical.

So before you decide you want to start a consignment shop, open a resale shop, or even organize a thrift for your favorite charity, read this. Even if you are successful Continue Reading »

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it…
Serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

It appears that sometimes, folks have a problem distinguishing “sell” from “sale”… and since they are both words dear to my heart, I thought I’d give a quick tour of when to use which word.

SELL is a verb. You sell something, or someone sells you another something. If you’re a retailer or a wholesaler, that’s your business: you sell stuff. You can also “sell someone on” an idea, a thought, a premise: She sold her mother on the idea that everyone Continue Reading »