Sometimes you need a weekend of looking at people’s old, good junk. Yard sales, thrift stores and antique shops are some of the best places to look for people selling their old stuff. When I visit my aunt in Connecticut, they have antique shops with endless rooms on an endless number of floors. Each seller has designated space for their items which ranges from a full booth to a shelf.

For some sellers, their booths are a curation of antiques they’ve collected, and for others it’s a hodgepodge of their old personal belongings. You could find almost anything you wanted from collectible thimbles to antique furniture. There are so many opportunities to leave with a cool find, it can be hard on the wallet. One shop had a section with rows of vinyl records, other shops had old technology like film cameras and typewriters.

There are so many little trinkets and tchotchkes, of course, and those little things are my antique shopping weakness. It took a lot of effort to show some restraint and not stock up on each one, but I still ended up with one or two.

It could probably be a whole weekend of exploring the many rooms and floors of the antique shops. Once you’ve seen it all, or think you have, there will be more to see within a few months.

We’ll visit Connecticut again soon and make sure we add a day to visit the usual shops. I hope to see some new things and some old things.

— Caroline Craig, administrative & advertising coordinator