Hmm … until today I had no idea that compulsive shopping is called Oniomania. Who knew?!? Maybe some of you have wiki’d that shit.

I guess when you go to enough sales, there is going to be a darker side to sales in general. I remember going to a sale in 2005 where the woman had purchased rooms and rooms of clothing, all of it duplicates in different colors. She would get one shirt and buy it in 30 colors. It was super strange and sort of made me feel uncomfortable.

I called Jenny after hitting a compulsive shopper sale last Sunday, and she said something about there being a difference between hoarding and when you can’t stop shopping. True, but sometimes it ends up looking pretty much the same.

So, the sale you ask? My husband and I just ended up there randomly last Sunday because we drove by a sign. I am sorry that the photos don’t really do it justice, since I wasn’t planning on hitting a sale and I didn’t have my phone or camera. I borrowed my husband’s iPhone to take some pictures, but it was making that clicking sound that screams “HELLO I AM TAKING A PHOTO” (that I was too stupid to turn off). The folks running the sale seemed very nice, but did wonder what I was doing.

This is a very small sampling of what was in the backyard.

Maybe you can’t tell, but that is a van with stuff on it. Oddly enough, there was also stuff for sale in it.

After I opened a box filled with old lady purses that looked like they came from the 1985 Fingerhut catalog, I made a comment about how someone had been a shopper. The woman running the sale explained that the old woman who owned the house had been a huge shopper. She then led me into the house (which reeked of something unpleasant) and was filled with her shopping. Nightgowns un-opened, but tons of them. Shoes never worn? A mountain of them. She took me upstairs and showed me the Christmas room and that was when I knew I need to leave.

She did explain that the woman couldn’t stop shopping to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars and lost her house because of it. They had been clearing her house out since it has sold weekend before last. Ouch!

I did not take home one of her more amazing items: the Fiber Optic Swan Rain Fountain Set, made by The Glass Blower.

It looked like it jumped right out of Spencer Gifts in the 1970s.