Cargo Largo and I have a love hate relationship. It’s a railway salvage store that carries odds and ends of stuff. You can find food, beauty supplies, clothing, furniture, tools, books, etc. If you saw my episode on TLC’s Extreme Cheapskates, Cargo Largo is like a clean Dirty Don’s.
My problem with Cargo Largo is their prices. They want to charge retail or higher for damaged, dirty, smashed and otherwise lesser quality goods. On the other hand, you can occasionally find a good deal if you know your prices.
I recently went inside after my Sister-in-law called me with a good find on protein bars. I ended up passing up the bars because they weren’t my favorite flavor, but found real feather throw pillows for $2 each instead! They are West Elm brand too. They also had larger versions in Pottery Barn brand for $5. After seeing this post at The Nester, I’ve been on the search for cheap feather pillows. I paid triple that for faux feather pillows half price at JoAnn, so am super excited about the feather inserts.
I’ve been allergic to feathers since I was a kid, but after I purchased a real feather duvet by accident (I thought it was faux down and since it was at Cargo Largo–there was no label or package information–but it was also KING size and only $35) and had no reaction to it, I decided to try pillows too. Now I’m convinced that I’m not allergic to feathers, just DIRTY feathers. And I’m really encouraged by the Nester’s reports that she machine washes her feather pillows with good results. Who would have thought? (Need a tutorial on sewing a pillow cover? I have one for you here.)
Anyway, the trip also resulted in Zand brand zinc lozenges for just $.50 a package (normally $2.99) and gum for Easter baskets $1.99 for 3 large packages, large spice bottles for $1 a jar, sliced almonds ($1.50) and a box of overnight size diapers for $7.99 (regularly $13.50.)
I still plan to mostly stay away from Cargo Largo, it’s better if I don’t find too many good deals, lol. But it was a happy skip home today :).
I forget the actual measurements of the room, but it’s something like 20 feet by 17 feet. If I wanted to get nothing accomplished today I would go measure it for you to be sure. But then I would start sewing, or cleaning and forget the whole reason why I was in there.
The ceiling has a good pitch and the side walls are barely over 2 feet high. Which doesn’t make much useable wall space. But after taking this picture, I realized that I wasn’t fully using the wall space I did have.
So I hired a friend to build plywood shelves on two sides of the room. He bought the wood for me and I painted them. 2 coats of primer and then 2 coats of paint (We used both rollers and paint brushes. We also purchased a paint sprayer for the project which was a waste of time and money. It just spit out paint in weird drips and we had to use a roller over it anyway.) Painting all this wood took 2 days. (Not steady work, including dry time. But our backs, shoulders and arms were sore.)
