For those of us who enjoy creating a secondhand wardrobe, thrift stores are great fun. But because the prices are so low and there is such a wealth of goods, thrift stores can be dangerous places for clutterers. Many people can’t bear to throw things away, even if those things make their homes unbearable. I know because I grew up with a clutterer.
We couldn’t eat at the dining room table (always covered with stuff), were afraid to open a closet door (because of the realistic fear that some of the stuff would fall on our heads), and eventually, couldn’t even walk into most of the bedrooms (they were filled to eye level with broken furniture, old clothes and junk mail).
That was long ago, before people started going on TV to talk about their problems. Now you can follow the “Clean Up Your Messy House Tour” on Oprah as organizer Peter Walsh brings order to the messiest of homes. You can also catch the 8th season of Clean House on the Style Network. There are many books available on the subject, my favorite being the classic Clutter’s Last Stand by Don Aslett. For clutterers looking for a support group that follows Alcoholics Anonymous guidelines, there’s Clutterers Anonymous and if you’re willing to pay for help, try the National Association of Professional Organizers.
The road to cleaning up the mess starts with sorting and finding a new home for all of the stuff. While clutterers do well to steer clear of shopping in thrift stores, making donations of unwanted items helps to clear out the piles while also helping somebody else.
April 27th, 2009 | Category: Clutter, Donating | Leave a comment
These heels, made by Miracle Tread of Craddock Terry Shoe Corporation, are 50 years old and still gorgeous!
I’d never owned a pair of heels until last week, when I visited my favorite vintage store and found the perfect pair. They’re skinny, just like my feet. If you haven’t noticed, narrow sizes have all but disappeared from the shoe racks. Were I to get an invitation to some fancy event, say a wedding, I could spend half a year just looking for shoes that fit me, and since there are very few companies that still make them, the prices are more than I want to pay. So I nabbed the skinny heels for $20 and will pack them away until the next invitation comes.
March 30th, 2009 | Category: Comparative Pricing, Secondhand Wardrobe Style and Fashion, Secondhand is Better than New | Leave a comment
It’s impossible to tune in to any media source these days without hearing the dismal news about the economy. One thing it means to me is that those of us who have a bit of extra cash need to be giving some of it to food banks and shelters. Donating your good used clothing is another way to help because rather than wasting away in your closet, it can get used by somebody who really needs it. And if you spend your clothing dollars at thrift stores run by charities that help people in need, your money goes where it can do some good.
March 20th, 2009 | Category: Donating | Leave a comment
The other night, after months of really bitter cold, my husband and I broke down and went to the enormous mall (we’re talking 1,700,000 square feet of retail space). Neither one of us likes going to malls because the point of them is to part people from their money. But on this particular night, we really needed to get out of the house. Because of the extreme cold, there weren’t a lot of choices.
It had been so long since we’d visited this place that I’d forgotten about the volume and variety of stuff being sold. Stuff for your home, stuff to wear, stuff to cook with, and especially stuff for bored teenagers who spend a lot of time wandering around the mall learning to become consuming adults.
On my regular thrift store jaunts, I’m constantly scratching my head, wondering why so much barely used or brand new clothing winds up there. The rare trip to my local mall reminds me that other folks have very different spending habits than I do. Will the recent downturn in the economy start to change that? It certainly has for some people, but that’s another topic for another day.
Meanwhile, I have to admit that I succumbed to the temptations of the mall on that cold night. I bought one book from the dollar store.
March 13th, 2009 | Category: Regular Retail Stores, Secondhand is Better than New | Leave a comment
My friend Joanne recently emailed me to say that she feels “kinda ‘funny’ about wearing someone else’s clothes (you know, vibes and spirits from the original owner). But”, she went on to write, “in today’s economy, perhaps I should re-think that.” She raises an interesting point. In general, if something gives me the heebie-jeebies, I stay away from it. Put another way, I believe that my intuition always works in my favor. I have made my best decisions when I’ve paid attention to it, and my worst ones when I’ve ignored it. So I try to pay attention. When I run into something in a thrift store that gives me the creeps, I leave the item there, even if it’s really, really inexpensive, and I really, really like it. That being said, in all the years I’ve been thrift store shopping, it’s only happened a few times. Once I brought home a sweater that had an unpleasant feel about it. I washed it and wore it a few times. It continued to give me the creeps, so I donated it back to the thrift store. I don’t know if my unpleasant feeling had to do with something physical about the sweater (itchy fiber? not quite the right color?), or if I really was picking up the vibe from a former owner. At that point, it didn’t matter to me what was bothersome about the garment because I’d gotten my two dollars and fifty cents worth out of it.
March 2nd, 2009 | Category: General Secondhand Wardrobe Thoughts, Mistakes | Leave a comment
