Lozza's Loot: Making good use of your loot in your home

These are two of the many questions which will zip in and out of your brain when you attend a car boot or go antique hunting.

There is never a good answer.

It just seems something catches your eye and for a flash we want something we would not possibly have the space to store or have a practical use for it our home.

What you have to be is truthful with yourself.

The best way to deal with it is to walk away, continue looking at things and if after five minutes you have forgotten about it or the spark for ‘that object’ has cooled then you didn’t want it in the first place.

It was a potential impulse to buy.

You are better not to have bought it butyou should think you can spend the money another day or invest it in something else.

There are some objects you can buy which you might not use butyou have a gut instinct they will be perfect for someone else when you sell.

Examples of these are:

- Old fashioned laundry boxes: These are boxes from the 1930s-1960s.

They were given to a customer from a specific laundry after they had washed and ironed your clothes.

They were not the customers and had to be paid for if damaged.

They were a way of putting your dirty clothes in and then seeing the box come back with clean clothes.

Keeping it green and reusable even then.

They were like suitcases but with a lid you put over the bottom half and leather straps around the outside so you could carryit.

The boxes have the name and telephone number of the laundry on the front.

What can they be used for now? If you are luckyto have a laundryroom then they would be perfect on shelves as a decorative box.

- Butter boxes: These were used by a dairy to transport butter to the shops.

They were made of cardboard and had advertising on the front and sides. Now they were look good in your kitchen as a decoration.

- Bags: One which I think is a growing area and a tip for today and tomorrow is original retro-aeroplane bags.

These would include the canvass zip over the shoulder bags from airlines like Pan Am. There are the late 1970s/1980s bags from companies like British Airways and Air France.

These can be used today and now. You can buyreproduction retro bags on Ebay but it is nicer to have an original.

- Old fashioned beer crates: These can be brought up to scratch and can look very nice getting some bees wax into the box to give it colour which has been lost.

These can be used as beer crates or turned on their side and used to store wine in a kitchen.

I have to admit I have bought something for no reason other than I wanted it and anyway when am I going to see another?

Trouble is they are not the best buys but can be strangely satisfying as they are so quirky.

Make sure the object or objects have an appeal to others when you sell them on, rather than an appeal to one -you.

My guilty buy is.....a Wall’s Ice cream sign from the 1970s.

It is on a wooden ‘A’ frame and it has two signs in each part of the frame. I cannot do anything with it unless I open up a village shop and sell Wall’s Ice Cream then I could make good use of the sign.

It is in good condition and the tin plated signs are not scratched.

It would appeal to a sign collector and a collector of food product signs.

But I hope as it is a sign it was worth buying as an investment but how much it will realise I don’t know yet.

It should be more than I paid for it.

I paid £50 for my ice cream sign and I think the price will be above this amount today.