A Vintage suitcase tower - A gift from Hard Rubbish

Last weekend they had what is called 'Hard Rubbish day' in my neighborhood. The theory is that you are supposed to put out anything unsellable or not able to be given away to op shops and which cannot go into normal rubbish and the council picks it up. Popular items for hard rubbish include broken TV's and the like. But of course, for vintage bounty hunters like myself there is also some treasures to be found amongst the trash!

So here is my bounty from hard rubbish - three beautiful vintage suitcases (well in my eyes at least, my hubby begs to differ - I did have to smuggle these into my house while he wasn't looking!). Now I do have to admit, I gave these cases a good clean so they didn't look quite as good as this when I picked them up, but all they really needed was a little clean with soapy water and then some scrubbing of the aluminium to remove some of the rust and ta-da!

As you can see, there are still rusty bits on the aluminium but I think that just adds to their character. By the way, to remove rust I found the best thing to be lemon juice and salt (I think I got that tip from a book called 'Speedyclean'). Of course, you just have to be careful to wash all the salt off afterwards so it doesn't corrode the case. Can you see the little ticket stub on the suitcase above by the way, it shows an old Qantas logo. See, that is why I love vintage!

I love the logos on these cases 'futura' and 'bon voyage' - such character!


I still haven't quite decided how I am going to arrange and decorate my vintage suitcase collection - I thought I might add a hat and put on my vintage beauty case . . . not sure yet . . .

Vintage beauty case - op shop/thrifted ($5!)

Hat - op shop/thrifted

Speaking of hats, vintage suitcases are a great way to store your hats. I lined my cases with tissue paper, put a ball of tissue paper in the skull part of the hat to keep its shape and there you go - a great storage idea for hats (dust is the big enemy for hats so I tend to store my best ones away).
You will notice that the inside of the suitcase above is water-damaged. That is because, unfortunately, it rained very heavily the weekend of the 'hard rubbish' day. However, it is a testament to the quality of these cases that they are still very beautiful and show very little damage to the outside despite the rain (by the way this photo probably shows the damage a little worse then it looks in real life).
The only sad thing is that the water made the name of the person unreadable and I love to have that sort of thing written in my cases - again it adds such character and gives the case even more history.

I hope this has inspired you to fossack away during your next hard rubbish day - all the best of vintage luck!