I recently dropped one pant size and had to replace all of my jeans. For around thirty dollars, I bought six pair at my local thrift store. That’s less than I would have paid for any one of them had I bought them new.

Except for a few tee shirts, everything else in my closet still fit. For people who lose a more significant amount of weight, shopping at used clothing stores can be a real financial lifesaver. As we near the end of Secondhand Wardrobe Week, I suggest that you have a look at this article by Julia Hillegass. She describes how secondhand stores helped both her wallet and her wardrobe when she was facing similar clothing challenges.

Secondhand finds

Yesterday five dollars and thirty-one cents bought me two mugs, a pair of Harvé Barnard dress pants, workout shorts and the late, great George Carlin’s book, Brain Droppings. The store was especially crowded, as it always is a few days before Halloween. The holiday crowd makes me wonder why used clothing is considered OK on Halloween, but is looked down upon every other day of the year.

I really love stripes, even to the point of sometimes combining different ones. I hadn’t found any striped shirts for a while and was happy that my secondhand wardrobe finds for the week were two for two dollars each–one for summer and one for winter. Yeah stripes!

The other day, I was about to take my 19-year-old son out to lunch when he suggested that we first stop by a neighborhood thrift store so that he could look for some shorts for himself. I was a little grumpy about it because I was planning my usual weekly thrift store trip the next day, when most of the clothing would be ½ off. Unfortunately, he was working the following day, so we popped into the thrift for 10 minutes before hitting the diner. He found 3 pairs of shorts for $17.

The next day, the sale day, I found 12 really heavy, made-for-restaurant use, Anchor Hocking drinking glasses, a black tee by Newport News, a cuddly (and brand new—still had the sizing sticker down the front) fleece sweater from Banana Republic and a Gap pea coat in a brilliant turquoise corduroy. All of it cost $25. Hitting the sales doesn’t always work out, but when I have a choice, ½ off is always more appealing than full price. 

In my last blog, I wrote about how I feel a dressing room is a necessity at secondhand clothing stores. Today I list a few thrift store pleasantries that encourage me to part with my money:

v     I get a little nervous if a secondhand shop is too clean and pretty, because I start to think that I might have wandered into Macy’s by accident. I like my thrifts to be rough around the edges. Then again, some are never, ever swept or vacuumed, and that’s really unpleasant.

v     Everyday prices should be low enough so that I’m not standing around, looking at price tags and wondering why I didn’t just go to Target. Low cost is one of my main motivators for shopping used. Sale days, of course, are always a plus.

v     There needs to be enough lighting to see the merchandise.

v     A rack for clothing that people have tried on but do not want to buy is helpful because so many shoppers just leave the clothes in the dressing room. 

Today I found a pair of new Eddie Bauer pants for $3.00 at one of my secondhand store haunts. I knew that they hadn’t been worn because they had a little plastic bag with a spare button attached to the inside of the waistband.  

There is so much more new stuff at the thrift stores these days than there was decades ago when I first started shopping for used clothing. I’m guessing that the increase in volume has to do with two things: one is that now, more than ever before, everybody is racing around so much of the time that they don’t bother to return clothing that they don’t want; another is that retail stores discount items so often and so deeply that people buy things that they would otherwise leave on the rack at the store. It’s a great boon for us used clothing fiends, but not so great for those who aren’t getting use from what they buy. 

The other day, when my daughter and I went to our local Salvation Army, we came home with a particularly good haul. We spent $32.24 and brought home eight items. That’s an average of $4.02 per piece:

• 1 necklace (rhinestone, sparkly and irresistible)
• 1 Talbots summer skirt (the tags were still on this one, and the original cost was $58)
• 2 jeans and 1pair of corduroy pants
• 1 pair of pajama pants
• 1 sweater
• 1 tee shirt

I went back to the thrift store that had the ½ off winter clothing sale (the one where I was too hungry to shop, on April 2nd). I found a gorgeous cashmere sweater for $4. I also couldn’t resist a new set of 6 (still in their very stylish black cylindrical box!) salad-sized plates. The plates are decorated with New Yorker Magazine cartoons that are about food and eating.  So I can now enjoy my lunch while slowly uncovering New Yorker witticisms with each mouthful. I kept imagining the excitement of the person who originally bought them, probably a fan of the magazine. I paid $5 for the set and they still had the price tag on the bottom of the box ($39.00!!). Boy, some weird stuff shows up at the thrifts. I generally stay away from packing my house with excess things (always a possibility when you bargain hunt), but for five bucks, sometimes it’s just too tempting.