It has been raining again. Not continuously, but enough cold, grey weather to make a week feel heavier than it ought to.
The school holidays have shifted my morning rhythm. I love spending time with the grandchildren; they fill my heart with pride and joy. However, as joyous as those moments with the grandchildren are, I am still a business owner and being my own boss means I sometimes have to work while others get to play.
When listings do not go up at the pace I intended, it can be very easy to decide that I have not done enough.
The Measure of a Week
That was how the beginning of this week felt. I was busy all the time, yet I kept looking for visible proof of it in the catalogue and coming up short.
Every Thursday, my newsletter goes out to subscribers. Behind that one email is a great deal of work: finding the right pieces, photographing, researching, writing, checking the details and deciding what belongs in the next Curator’s Vault. Rain and grey skies are not particularly interested in my Thursday deadline. When the light is too poor to photograph the pieces properly, the listings have to wait.
This week I rushed to list one particular piece for an interested Instagram buyer, but that conversation did not become a sale. I looked at that single new listing and wondered whether I truly had the time to add the nine more I felt I should. Between editing images, research, and getting everything into the standard listing format, each piece takes anywhere from twenty-five to forty minutes. Multiply that by nine, add preparing the newsletter and this blog, and there simply was not a realistic way to fit it all into one week.
Then I stopped. I have done more than enough this week. One new listing does not mean only one thing was accomplished. It is proof of how much of my work happens beyond the catalogue.
An Order with Another Chapter
Right in the middle of doing that math, an unexpected order came through, and it stopped me in my tracks. This was not a regular, not someone from Bob Shop or Yaga, and not a follower who already knew my work from Instagram. This was a complete stranger who found me through a Google search and chose to trust me, and my shop, enough to place an order before we had ever had a single interaction.
Last week’s story was about an antique dealer who had met me and recognised the value of a piece I already knew mattered. This was different. Someone with no prior relationship to this shop decided, from a search result alone, that it was worth the risk.
Three hours after that first purchase, the same customer was still browsing my shop, and something else caught his eye: a pair of rabbit figurines. He paid for them separately and, rather than place a second Shopify order under R1,500 and incur another shipping charge, asked for the rabbits to be added to his existing order. Going from ordering mixing bowls to being charmed by a small pair of rabbits says something about the shop itself: that it is a place worth lingering in, not just a single listing worth buying.
This is the part of the dream I set out to build: not just a shop that sells, but a shop that is found, trusted and worth staying in, on its own merit. A stranger arriving from a Google search, buying, browsing further, and choosing to buy again is real, measurable proof that this work is becoming exactly what I hoped it would be.
That extra purchase, however, does not make every difficulty disappear.
The Work Behind the Window
Parcels can reach their destination and remain uncollected. When uncollected packages represent R5,000.00, the effect on cash flow is real. It is frustrating to manage while carrying on with the work that still needs doing. I am learning that the strength of an independent business is built in these less photogenic moments: following up, finding a way forward and showing up again.
While preparing the next newsletter (Newsletter 9), I realised I had missed a step. Newsletter 8: The Green Room had reached subscribers last week, but I had not yet posted its version to The Vault Journal, my permanent archive. We caught up with that post before moving on to Newsletter 9. I had to laugh at myself. Even the beautiful record of the work takes work to maintain.
People often see the finished photographs, the hunt and the pieces that make it into the shop. Behind them are the tasks that hold everything together: sorting records, checking sold pieces, maintaining Past Treasures and making sure the Journal and the shop’s navigation tell a clear story to someone discovering them for the first time. None of it is glamorous, but it is the scaffolding that lets the visible part stand.
The various platforms I use also add their own noise. This week I faced an automated warning on Bob Shop for asking a straightforward business question. I then spent three hours trying to log a dispute with Facebook and reach a person who could review my case and help me regain access to my old I’naturals page. When I followed up, I was told the case had been closed and I would have to start over.
The Hunt That Mattered
The hunt itself asks for patience. If you noticed the quiet on Instagram over the weekend, there was a simple reason: I found very little at Saturday’s market. Some days the tables are bare. I will not buy or show filler just to appear busy.
But one hunt did come right. An animal rehabilitation centre needed durable melamine plates to feed its animals. I had spent weeks trying to secure some at auction and losing the bids. This past week, I finally won a job lot and delivered the plates straight away. The rehabilitation centre was delighted. Seeing them put to good use was one of the most satisfying things I did all week, and not one of those plates needed to become a product listing to matter.
Photos courtesy of Carina Crayton, Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation.
Video courtesy of Carina Crayton, Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation — the bushbabies tucking into their dinner.
The Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation is an NSPCA-accredited Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation Centre near Naboomspruit, co-founded by Paul Oxton and Carina Crayton. As a registered non-profit, they take in injured, orphaned and displaced wild animals, caring for them until they can return to the wild wherever possible, unlike a sanctuary where animals stay permanently. It is quiet, selfless work, and people are often generous with their thanks but not always with their support. The plates I found will not feed every animal in their care for long, but their needs are constant. If this story moves you, please consider visiting their Facebook page and, where you can, making a donation. Thanks truly do help, but a donation helps them keep doing the work.
There were other signs of life, too. A new subscriber joined us. And I crossed 1,000 followers. I stopped to take that in: every person following along has chosen to make room for this shop in their day. That milestone came from showing up week after week, with patience and consistency. It is work a catalogue count simply cannot measure.
As I searched the existing collection of treasures in my shop for the next Curator’s Vault, The Shape of Things, I found more compelling forms than ten spaces could hold, 10 being the number I showcase every week.
The shop was not standing still. I had simply been looking at too narrow a measure of movement.
A Promise to Myself
On a personal note, I think many of us come into ourselves as we get older. I have had dreams and built ventures that did not unfold as I hoped. Yet over the past two and a half years, I have grown in ways that still astonish me. Some ideas were right for me before, but the time for them was not right. Now they are finding their way back.
One of my dreams is to share herbal poems that educate in a fun way, showing that there is so much more to plants than we might think at first. I set myself a goal of completing 50 poems as a gift to myself for my 50th birthday.
The body of work is not finished yet, but I have spent countless hours researching and bringing together my personal experiences with herbal wisdom. Hence a busy week...
I still want to bring more of my own raw voice to the poems, to honour my connection to the plants and nature as a whole. And I want to take my time making and testing the recipes with the children, letting them help harvest fresh herbs in all their amazing forms all while taking my own photos.
I do not need to rush this book into publication to know what reaching that personal milestone means to me.
This Week’s Lesson
I am learning to honour my own choices as a priority, not as something I earn only after everything else is done. I am my dreams, too. The commitment I make to myself matters, and keeping that promise is part of how I keep my commitments to others.
I often say that the right people will find the right pieces in my shop. This week reminded me that I am part of that same cycle. The rehabilitation centre needed plates for its animals; I heard that need, kept looking, and eventually found them. I was the right person to show up for them.
Helping others takes faith and confidence, just as trusting my own path does. Neither the plates I delivered nor the poems I am taking time to write needed to become another listing this week to be worthwhile. Neither did the stranger who found me on Google need to know how much that one order meant: proof, in black and white, that the dream is taking shape.
— Ina Lubbe, Purveyor of Vintage Treasure
Shift2ThriftVintage • Est. 2024 • Curated Vintage, South Africa • shift2thriftvintage.co.za
0 comments