I don’t have much experience with estate sales, but last fall I stopped at one on a whim and was delighted to find a dusty portal to another dimension.
The entire home was a time capsule from the 70s (I definitely sent my brother a picture of a blender I think our parents had). I saw so many things that I was charmed by (if only I had use for jaunty lady hats!) but the only things I brought home were these pink and green perfume bottles.
Disclaimer: For much of my adult life, I haven’t given much thought to fragrance, but that all changed last summer when, out of nowhere, I became highly motivated to be Someone Who Wears Perfume (which is a story—or many stories—for another day).
So, as a newly initiated Perfume Enthusiast, these vintage bottles were a shout-out to (or maybe from?) someone who came before me. They’re currently on my shelf with two other empty bottles (from a decorative set my late uncle gave me decades ago) and a mini bottle of a perfume I bought as a teenager on an exchange trip to France. The mini bottle smells nothing like the perfume I remember loving it, but I love it anyway as keepsake figurine.
Anyway, that’s the main thing. I found these perfume bottles at an estate sale and I enjoy them.
It doesn’t stop there, though. The people running the estate sale said that the owner of the home had moved out years prior, and had been living with a romantic partner. Apparently, the home had been used entirely for storage throughout this (unspecified-but-implied-to-be-like-10-years) amount of time.
I’m skeptical of this explanation, because it seemed entirely too easy, and buttoned-up, and low-key pleasant enough for a casual shopper like me to not feel weird about buying things from a home that had clearly been gathering dust since Gen Xers were babies.
It also left me with even more unanswered questions, which I opted to keep to myself because I’m not sure I want to know the truth. Mainly, are these bottles haunted? And if so, should I mind? So far, everything is inconclusive, but at least our dog has made worthwhile attempts to sniff out any evil and—as far as I can tell—has not found any.
So Ten Minutes Ago 