Picture this: Girl with francophilia arrives to live and stay in France for first time in her life. Girl goes travelling each time there are school holidays (and there are many!!). Girl cannot refrain from buying many souvenirs. Said culture-shocked spendthrift also goes on a sale spree during “les soldes” in January/February. Steadily going broke girl also receives gifts of books (yay, heavy!) from her colleagues for her job well done, and from friends for her birthday. A month before her departure from France, she realizes that her stupidly heavier hardshell suitcase can barely fit all her current belongings (damn you, thick, heavy winter clothing) and her combined luggage probably weighs more than her bread, cheese and wine indulging body. And, there are a lot of stairs at the train stations (yippee, skip). What does she do??
Voilà! A collective vide-grenier (garage sale) is being held in Cahors! 9€/3m² of space in les Allées Fénelon from 7am to 6pm, Wednesday, May 6. I don’t even need to advertise!? Yes, please! Put me down for a place where I can have my possessions and myself rained on at 7 in the morning, and where I can boil in the subsequent sun-drenched afternoon. Along with this temperamental weather, I got a great, free 8 hour tanning session (all natural!), free bladder and dehydration endurance training for a 10 hour day (I seriously chugged water in preparation last night like I was about to run another half marathon this morning) and free French conversation practice with men who persisted in asking me for a café, a drink, lunch, or dinner, encore et encore! (My landlady just called me “too Canadian” for feeling this way when I told her about it. Oui, je sais, je sais…et j’en suis fière, haha).
But, for mon premier vide-grenier, it was a 115€ success! (minus the 9€ for the little chalk marked plot of Cahors property – did I mention it’s located above some Roman amphitheatre ruins!? – that I called my own for ten hours.). Even my landlady was impressed! I also felt like I was on display all afternoon on my towel, especially when I unveiled my tattoos in the heat and someone asked to take a photo!
(This was not that photo, but I thought I’d take a selfie to remember my first vide-grenier ever!)
Squinting for literally all day against the blinding sun, I even came to some valuable conclusions about myself in regards to consumerism.
♥ One: I am less attached to things than I used to be, especially if they are trivial (but touch my beloved teddy bear and you die). If people steal from you or try to rip you off, then perhaps they need it more than you do, so let it go. Let them have it. Also, people who want all your things for less than a euro each are kind of scarily greedy, make them go away faster by lowering your prices without lowering your dignity.
♥ Two: It was surprisingly easy for me to feel no sense of loss in letting people have my items of clothing or maquillage for les tous petits prix. All I felt was a sense of relief in getting rid of things that I know will not fit in my suitcase or will weigh me down when I want to hit the road. I felt lighter and freer with each item I sold.
♥ Three: It’s a curious thing, I am living with just enough possessions as fits in one large and one small suitcase, and I am able to still feel like I own more than I need. Looking around me at all the other people trying to sell boxes, tables, and trucks full of things they no longer want reminded me of how often I have been inclined to purchase things I probably did not need. I think this has been a huge lesson for me when it comes to how I spend my (lack of) money. Imagine how much more money I could have had if I hadn’t spent it in the first place, on all the things I am trying to get rid of now. Ditto for these people and their hoarding-style collections of possessions.
♥ Four: Number Three was probably inspired by Dorothy Parker’s quote,
“If it doesn’t make you feel fabulous, don’t do it, don’t buy it, don’t keep it.”
Essentially, my new rule when I turned 25. I decided that I am too “old” to be trying to buy/do/wear things that I feel like I should, to be able to “fit in” or measure up to some vague and chauvinistic societal standard of appearance. Life is too short for me to wear underwear that constantly gives me a wedgie (screw you La Senza, girls who need XS panties might also have big butts, too), or pants that make my legs look like pale denim sausages. I also wear less make-up now in France than I did back in Canada (except red lipstick, red lipstick makes me feel fabulous). People aren’t going to die because I didn’t cover up my under-eye bags, so why bother? It doesn’t make me feel fabulous to cake on tacky paste under my eyes in the pretence that I slept well the night before, because I didn’t. Basically, why was I wasting my time on this bullshit before? Suddenly, there were a lot of things that I felt like I could live without.
Let these introspective revelations serve as an iron grip on my mind when my misguided fingers reach to open my wallet on impulse.
auds & ends 