Salem rewards those unafraid to seek out their treasures. And in the case of shopping – which, let’s face it, can really suck around here – it reveals its greatest gems to those brave enough to repurpose.

Repurposing – if you haven’t heard of it, then maybe you’re one of those people who turns to the big box stores, always goes to Portland to get their shop on, or who orders stuff online because you just never make it out of the house. Maybe you haven’t heard about it because you’re still fetishizing the shiny and new while scoffing at the slightly worn and lovably old.

But if you’re like me, then you know that sometimes the best finds in the area are the left-behinds: the junk from someone else’s trunk. Now that the economy has put all of our deepest and most shameful consumerist desires in the crapper for at least the next quarter, I can honestly say that we in my household are bringing salvage back.

My husband Adam and I come from two long lines of pack rats with panache. My grandfather was a champion consumer of fine junk. He would travel on weekends to auctions to pick up power tools, old books, and way too many hand-carved fishermen.

Adam is the next generation of stuff-finder. When he saw a Dirt Devil in a dumpster once, he simply brought it home, emptied it, and replaced the belt: Good as new. He’s also got an eagle eye for stuff hiding in plain sight. He can spot a discarded spoon laying on the side of the road front 20 feet. We still have those spoons – all five of them – one of which he has repurposed into a bracelet.

But my father-in-law Ken is the grand poobah of the garage sale find. His finely-tuned garage sale-scouring skills are born less out of a fierce attachment to used stuff than a neurotic need to spend as little money as possible. This is a man who once invented a machine that could separate two-ply toilet paper into two rolls. This is a man who puts gently used ice cubes in the tray for next time.

I’m not any of those types. In fact, I’m probably the snootiest vintage shopper in the world. But I think that the time has come for all of us to channel our inner Ken. I particularly like shopping for precious junk in Salem, because often, the shop-owners have absolutely no idea what they have on their hands.

Take Encore Consignments on Commercial, where we bought any furniture we needed after our move. Its constantly rotating selection has included, in recent weeks, a purple velvet couch that looked plucked from Prince’s great room.

Engelberg Antik’s downtown carries reasonably priced Formica tables that I have seen go for $400 in Portland and other places where everything old is new again.

The Goodwill on Lancaster Drive isn’t just the place where old toy fads go to die – it’s got the most bizarre and fascinating selection of coffee mugs I’ve seen.

I’ve also met more than one person in Salem who professes to live “the Value Village lifestyle.”

But our favorite place of all is the “Store” store on Silverton Road (Action Liquidators, with the laconic sign). If you can find a path through the heaps of old furniture – nearly impossible most days – you just might find yourself in the sleek image of an antique mirror.

Something strange happens when you save a piece of garbage from the junk heap. You are inspired to write the story of that product yourself – where it was acquired, who held that Richard-Nixon-on-a-$3-bill coffee mug, and why did she let it go so easily?

In short, you become a curator of your own life.

So now all you need, of course, is your own finely-tuned vintage aesthetic – creating that is the best part of all.

Three years from now, when Target appropriates your design sense and repurposes it to suit the masses, you can laugh and can say: “Hey, I was doing that in 2009.”