Category — Secondhand is Better than New

The thrifts are packed with jeans. If you’re new to thrifting, one easy way to get started is to look for a great used pair.

Four Reasons to Buy your Jeans Used

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Thrift stores can smell like a combination of musty basement, mothballs and who-knows-what else. I personally find the scent of regular retail manipulation to be far less appealing.

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Thank you to Chelsea Pech, who writes for beautyxpose.com. She interviewed me and wrote a lovely article about the joys of secondhand shopping which you can read here.

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.