Secondhand Nation

Thrift Stores: Consumerist Graveyards or Working People's Salvation?

Great article in by Judith Freeman from the L.A. Times that got me thinking.

Are thrift stores a sign of our noxious consumerist culture?  Am I doing the retail version of dumpster diving?  Are we thrift fanatics inadvertently making a statement about the absurdity of an economy built on novelty and competitive envy?

I can't decide. 

For one thing, shopping at a thrift stores for me is really about shopping, nothing more.  I like thrift stores because I can perform the act of shopping more frequently with less financial detriment.  I like looking at things.  I like imagining my life reinvented by some unexpected find I discover hidden in a pile of junk on a shelf.  I like buying clothes because I don't want to be out of style.  Dressed in vintage rags as they may be, my intentions are the same as any mall rat or lady who lunches at Neiman Marcus. 

Uncomfortable thoughts.  Makes me wonder if I should be proud to be citizen of the Secondhand Nation after all.

The Church Rummage Sale Blues

Figure 1:  Sign for another church rummage sale, not the one I discuss in this post.  No need to be snotty, I suppose.

Last year, I was singing the praises of the church rummage sale.  Sadly, this year's cherry-popper sale has me a bit bereft. 

It started when my neighbor John tipped me off to a rummage sale his church was holding. 

Sweet, I thought.  My daughter would be at preschool and the church was just a few blocks north of her school.  I envisioned spending my morning blissfully pawing through tons of under-priced merchandise, sans begging child, lavishly pausing to finger old baking tins or rifle through piles of folded linens.  The church was also selling plants, and though I hit the Friends School of Minnesota's Annual Plant Sale already, who can resist a cheap bedding plant?

So I'm all charged up about this sale.  Holding off on other purchases just in case there's a cheaper deal to be had.

I had such a great experience a few weeks back at a local rummage sale held by the boosters of a high school marching band so I was inflating this other church sale in my head.

(That sale had yielded coconut and seashell windchimes, Oaxacan tinwork Christmas decorations and a lovely set of rubbermaid teaspoons, among other things. Tingles!)

As I walked from the parking lot (great looking annuals!  but not at prices that mattered! and I hate annuals anyway!) into the church, I was greeted by a slough of elderly white guys, welcoming me and pointing out the way to the sale room.

I was also assaulted by the cloying, barf-tastic smell of Manwich.  A tagboard sign highlighted in shaking, Sharpie pen strokes, "Sloppie Joe and chips, 1.00."

Agh.  It was the kind of odor that makes pregnant women gasp and hork into their purses. 

The sale was held in the cafeteria, making it convenient for shoppers to buy their things and then sit down at one of the chipped formica banquet tables and tuck into a plate of fresh-from-the-slow-cooker Manwich, a clutch of greasy Old Dutch potato chips and a cup of industrial decaf.   Around the tables and the kitchen serving area, more clusters of old people, some in wheelchairs or pushing walkers with tennis ball pads, milling about fussing with serving trays and the tackle box full of money.

My neighbor was nowhere to be seen and though he's retired, compared to the crew manning this sale, he was fucking Jack LaLanne.

The sale was okay.  Lots of clothes, which are generally a waste of time for me to flip through (how many gold-button women's blazers does a body need?) and lots of dirty, scuffed up plastic kids' toys and a whole array of baby items (bottles, wipe warmers, pacifers - yuk). 

There were lots of plastic blinds and Christmas ornaments (blecch) and scurvy-looking bed sheets and one of those Ye Olde pressure cookers that used to kill people way back when.  Stuff that belongs in the trash, really.   

I bought a cheesecake tin, a cake whip, a food mill and a linen dishtowel  for $1.70.  All things I needed and liked, but still.  The cashier was a friendly woman with an oxgen tank plugged into her nose, whom I was glad had a big button calculator at her disposal.

This spring in Minnesota has been highly disappointing already, in terms of weather.  Can't we get some good cheap stuff to offset the dreariness?

I'm trying to keep chipper, though the aroma of Manwich still clings to my noseholes.

Thrift Store Employee Burnout, Part II: Coping

 

This is my fourth tour as a thrift store employee.  I have worked, on and off, for the same nonprofit store since 2001.  I have been a cashier and floor clerk, a supervisor, a donations processor and a specialty donations processor (books).

I have come to the store willingly three times, seeking work.  Except for my current tenure, when my help was solicited.  Their book pricer had quit and they found themselves swamped to the ceiling with books. 

Would I, could I, for 9 bucks a hour, for 10 hours a week, work for them again?

I ask you - what lover of books would turn this opportunity down, arising, as it did, during a particularly arid time in my writing career?  You get to paw through books, throw away all the brittle, yellowed Leon Uris and James Michener paperbacks, run your mitts over the latest and greatest volumes, come home every shift laden with books for everyone in the family. 

No customer service.  No cleaning the bathroom.  No counting cash.  Just you and the books and an unheated storage bin, sorting, pricing, and keeping a mental inventory of how many copies of the more popular and nauseating titles we have on hand (The Left Behind series, Jan Karon, everything Oprah ever breathed on).

What's not to love, huh?

This freelance shit has ruined me for working retail.  Much like thrift stores have ruined me for shopping retail.  I don't want to work 20 hours to make what I can make in two hours. 

Yes, I understand that writing isn't as reliable.  But I'm in the throes of planning my break-up, and this my friend, is the key to surviving any uncomfortable job situation you find yourself in:  plotting your eventual departure provides a deep and cozy nook for your sanity to rest while you total up all the financial mis-steps doing such work creates.

As a professional writer with a passion for thrift culture, I told myself this job was my hands-on research, my behind-the-scenes, first-hand reporting. 

Unfortunately, it has become, like most jobs, a boring commute and a piddly paycheck. 

So I'm telling myself that once I snag a copy of Sally Schneider's The Improvisational Cook, Hertzberg & Francois' Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, and the latest Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach (have I mentioned how much I adored Atonement?  It utterly destroys your soul, in a good way), I am so putting in my notice.

Thrift Store Employee Burnout, Part I: Recognize the Signs

Figure 1:   Reject clothing, sorted and baled, no doubt, by overworked and underappreciated thrift store employees.

Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB) claims millions of underachieving lives every year.*  It's a tragic cluster of symptoms that can cause individuals to engage in destructive behaviors like drinking head-achey pink wine or paying full retail prices.  In a series of hard-hitting, shocking posts, we'll examine the scourge that is TSEB and offer steps to recognize it, combat it and ultimately, overcome it.

Signs You Have Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB)

1.  When you see bowls of potpourri set out as air freshener, you immediately sniff their contents.

2.  You have bought or seriously contemplated buying food in a discount dollar store.

3.  You can recite all the house brands of Wal-Mart (Ragged Glory, George, Metro 6) J.C. Penneys, (St. John's Bay, MixIt, Worthington) and Herbergers (Relativity, Studio Works).

4.  You have made or tried to make a skirt out of unsold neckties.

5.  Customers chomping on chicken wings while shopping or arguing with a sales clerk starts to seem like a brilliant way to multitask.

6.  The first thing you think when you see an old friend is a) would I recycle her entire outfit for rag scrap?  b)  could I put that purse at $9.99 even if it is a clearly fake Gucci knockoff?

7.  You dream about making garden furniture from broken cross country skis and bowling balls.

8.  You can predict, just by looking at the person who donated a bag of items, whether it will contain a)  fake flowers b) crappily-printed books about Jesus c) stained pillows embroidered with geese wearing sun bonnets   d)  a shaving cream warmer

9.  You are intimately familiar with all of Ron Popeil's products and their relative marketability

10.  You take Claritin every single day, even though you don't have allergies, and still sneeze every time you walk into work.

*Not actual "lives."  "Lives" here refers to joie de vivre, personal satisfaction, ability to find meaning in work and life, et cetera.      

Deep Thrifting: The Men's Department

Figure 1: All of these outfits available, somewhere, at a thrift store near you. 

Most thrift store men's departments are a no-man's-land of pleated dress pants, stained neckties and 80's style shaker sweaters worn by Bill Cosby circa 1985.

Unless you're in the market to look like Corey Haim at the peak of his career, you'll not be shopping for men's clothing in most thrifts. Still, there are gems to unearth, if you know what to look for.

Figure 2:  Corey Haim, not at the peak of his career.  Is it right to call what Corey Haim does a "career"?

First, check out the sweaters. Sure, you'll find mostly stuff that the Cos would approve, but if you are a knitter or needle-crafter, you'll want to look for thick-knit ones, in cottons, wools or good blends, that you can take apart for the yarn. Read about that here.

Second, head for the jeans. Sometimes thrift store pricers won't realize they are pricing women's jeans and you'll find some Levi's marked at significantly less than they would be in the women's area.

Third, HOODIES.  That's right, girls.  If you're not the midriff-skimming type, you'll find normal-sized hoodies over here in the men's department.  Thrift store employees tend to put big and bulky stuff in men's, when it could easily be unisex.  But that makes life terribly complicated and working in a thrift store is an endless parade of unquantifiable and uncategorizable merchandise as it stands.

Finally, look at the socks and ties.  Men's socks can come in bitchin' argyle styles, which are fun and the one exception to my No Used Socks rule.  And ties?  Well, try making a lightplate nice and fancy with this little ole project from Craft Magazine.   

Bad Books Nobody Wants, Part II

Here's another annotated list of books I hate that continually flood the thrift store I work at:

See, I Told You So and The Way Things Ought To Be by Rush Limbaugh. 

Here's the thing with political books written by media commentators:  by the time they reach print, they are untimely and out of step.  700 million new things have happened to reveal their snappy, house-of-cards analyses for the gum-flapping horseshit they are.  Also, Rush Limbaugh?  Can go fuck a roof rake.

Let's Roll:  Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage by Lisa Beamer. 

This is the wife of Todd Beamer, the guy who probably helped over-take the terrorists on United Flight 93, which prevented the plane from crashing into its intended target.  Sure, this is a skin-tingling scenario to imagine and surely offers more than cold comfort to Lisa Beamer.  But seeing this book, over and over, I dunno.  It just annoys the shit out of me.  It reminds me that people will commodify and market almost anything - hero husbands, boil-in-a-bag pasta, their spiritual relationship with anal sex - which brings out the worst cynical hermitty characteristics of my personality. 

Seven From Heaven by Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey. 

First, I hate the word Heaven.  If the concept of heaven was rendered dramatically, it would be the gayest Broadway musical review ever, with Vegas showgirls, talking chimps and ending with a song-and-dance number culminating in an ejaculation of glitter confetti.  Ugh.  Second, there's the multiple births.  You know, I don't think having seven tiny, needy infants ALL AT ONCE is all that cute.  Clearly, I'm not gonna get all teary and sentimental about 7 eating-and-shitting machines.  Because I have one eating-and-shitting machine and I KNOW what I speak of.   Third, take a second and work up a profile in your head of what kind of individual bought this book.  If you're thinking the saggy-assed lady in the Christmas-applique sweatshirt with the home perm and the GOD IS PRO-LIFE sticker on her rusting mini-van, then bingo.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. 

You have to feel pretty bad for James Frey.  First, he's got that awful white-guy jheri curl.  Then Oprah goes and busts his nuts on daytime television.  And before I found out that his book was basically poppycock, I must admit the story fascinated me.  Though I feel for his fairy-tale-creating, lying ass, I am tired of seeing this book come in, since there is almost one in every box of books I go through.  I kept my copy, at least. Jesus, if you hated it so much, do me a favor and just set it on fire in your own home.

The Celestine Prophecy & The Tenth Insight by James Redfield.

I suppose by now you're getting a sense of what side of the self-help fence I fall onto.  I'm all for self-help, as in, helping yourself, whether it be to Asian buffets or just getting your closets organized.  But not so much for Self-Help Books.  Especially when they get all woo-woo and make all sorts of crazy leaping insights into "exotic" cultures.  That's right, Carlos Casteneda;  put down that peyote and look at me when I'm talking to you.    

Bad Books Nobody Wants

Recently, I went back to work in the secondary market as a book pricer/sorter.  This means twice a week, I go to a cold, dirty sorting bin in the back of a Nameless Thrift Store and toss away many, many shitty books.  Here's a few of my least favorites:

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.  I don't think anyone's traveling this road anymore, and M. Scott Peck's dead.  What the hell is in this thing? 

How Could You Do That?!! "Doctor" Laura Schlesinger.  This woman could die tomorrow and her legacy of terrible advice will live on and on and on...

The Pill Book.  Ugh;  this fat mass market gem often shows up with giant tomes on vitamins and microwave cookbooks.

The Expectant Father.  This book is always in pristine condition.  Hmmm...

REACH OUT.  This is like a groovy, right on Bible with wavy-gravy font on the cover and pictures of chicks with ironed hair. 

The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.  This book is so huge and heavy you could use it as a murder weapon.  Funny how it's always getting donated, though;  I'm guessing the porn is staying home close by the fire.

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.  I dunno anything about this dude except that he has TOO MANY COPIES OF HIS ICKY WALKING ON THE BEACH BAREFOOT book.

What To Eat When You're Expecting.  This one is also often in perfect condition, the spine uncracked...

I plan to go on.  The crap that gets donated is astounding.  And I love it.

Halloween at the Thrifts

 

Figure 1:  A happy Halloween?  Not with all the poseurs mucking up my local thrift haunt!

For hardcore thrifters, Halloween can be excruciating. 

First, the store layout gets turned upside down to accomodate the new racks of costumes and props. 

Next, an influe of "new" (read "cheap") merchandise appears, taking away valuable shelf space for true collectibles. 

And finally, out come the amateurs, the high schoolers and dilettantes looking trawling for costumes. They laugh at and mock the state of the store and it's occupants, sniffing at the general grime and lack of merchandising and marketing that the diehard thrift devotee has learned to look past.

.

Figure 2:  Bitchin picture, huh?

If you weren't already feeling class tensions before,  you will during Halloween.  Pawing through the racks for clothing you will wear not just for a joke while scads of slumming soccer moms debate costume ideas with their snotty kids is a definite fun sucker. I avoid the thrifts if I can during this time, though I do know that the Halloween foray is often an entry point for new thrift shoppers, yes, yes, yes, I get it, everyone has to start somewhere.  Still, it annoys me. 

But this year, I decided to reap the benefits of Halloween, in order to diffuse some of the disgust I feel toward Christmas.

My two young nephews live in Holland.  Fearing that whatever new toys I'd purchase would end up being on the Made in China / Lead/Mercury Recall List, I decided to go the reuse route.  I went to Value Village and filled the cart with a wonderful assortment of Halloween costumes and gear to create a box of instant dress up that the two brothers can use whenever they decide to play superheros or firetrucks or coal miners or just wear a alien googly-eyed headband if that suits their fancies. 

I mean, I buy the plastic toy crap for my kid, too.  But what does she invariably do?  Put an old tutu on her head and then decide to play with a handful of pencils. 

Figure 3: Halloween, the heathen kid's Christmas

So why not avoid the whole stupid Christmas consumption frenzy by taking advantage of the current holidays bounty?  Most thrift stores will be marking down their Halloween stuff as the actual day approaches, so you owe it to yourself to transform this somewhat negative and insane spoke in the thrift year to your benefit.   

Image Credits:  Figure 1, A Happy Halloween, drawing by Ellen Clapsaddle via Wikimedia;  Figure 2,  Halloween in Derry 2005 by SeanMack via Wikimedia;  Figure 3:  Halloween Party at the Shafter Migrant Camp, California by Dorothea Lange, November 1938, via Library of Congress Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, LC-USF34- 018549-D    

Everything You Really Need

There is something overwhelmingly comforting to me about buying resale/reuse products.

Think about it. Everything you really need - it's already been made, it's already been partially consumed, and it's just sitting there, uniquely, waiting for you to get it at the thrift store or rummage sale.

Cargidan sweaters. Bread pans. Terra cotta pots. Tablecloths. Armchairs.

It's all there. You just have to decide where and when you'll get them.

I have never been an early adopter. Our family wasn't, either. We were the last house on the block to get a microwave, a video camera and a VCR. Prior to those inventions, we seemed to do just fine with saucepans on stovetops, Super 8 home movies and The Wonderful World of Disney.  Whenever I see something newfangled and spangly like an iPhone or a GPS navigation system and I get all tense and Luddite, fearing what complications the instruction manual will involve.

So it suits me to shop resale, to hang onto my possessions for long whiles before dropping them for the next hot thing, to arrive late at the party, as it were. I haven't always been short on cash, but I am these days, and to spend money on all-new items seems drunken and wasteful. 

But despite my low cash flow, I feel less stress about acquisition than most people. I know that when I get around to buying things, they will be cheap and relatively timeworn. I don't feel that my cost of living is increasing in this way; I'm just happy to have a television, thank you very much, never mind this plasma or LCD baloney. I don't consider trading in my car every year or upgrading to a bigger house or buying a new wardrobe from Macy's.   Too much work.  Too much money.  Not as exciting as digging for gems amidst racks of cast-offs.

Though the search for that perfect sweater or chair is exciting and stimulating, consuming in this way actually makes me feel much more calm and content.  My great ambitions include finding a enamel pots I can cook with, or a set of canning jars in great shape, or a living room sofa in crazy colors they don't make anymore. It's all a matter of going out and seeing what turns up on the sales floor or what rolls down some random stranger's driveway.  In my model, I don't need to keep up on the latest trends or iterations.  What I want is out there and getting it will be challenging and fun and satisfying than the conventional "saving up" period involved with a new purchase.

How many times have I scoured the mall - usually in pursuit of some fuddy-duddy dress-up costume for some frumpy, un-fun social event like someone's dumbassed wedding - and come up wanting?  Trying, fruitlessly, to drop cash on sparkling brand new things, in every conceivable store?  It seems impossible, in these days of endless choice, to come up for air after a day of shopping and make no progress.  But it happens to me frequently when I chose to be a primary consumer.   While in the secondary market, I come home with something that pleases me on nearly every shopping trip.

Yes, I want new things at times. New bras. Handmade soaps and lotions (Dear Santa: I want everything in the LUSH catalog. I've been good. Love, Carrie.) Some good sheets. A computer full of titzed-out software that can bake cookies and make logos, all while creating podcasts and stickers.

And I want experiences, too: a new hair cut, a full-body massage, a trip to Portand so I can spend an entire day at Powell's bookstore.

But mostly, I feel that resale has calmed the consumerist tendencies our society creates. Whatever I really need has already been made and if I'm patient enough or wait long enough, it'll show up at my local thrift hang-out, with a buck ninety-nine price tag on it.

What about Happiness? Adventure? Fun?

Yeah.  You might get those things from an afternoon of thrift shopping, too.  But where desire's concerned, there are no guarantees.  You might also end up wanting to hang yourself after a demoralizing experience like this.   

Mostly, the thrift store works best with small tangibles:  springform cheesecake pans, gardening books, jigsaw puzzles.  Those Big, Important, Capitalized Concepts, like Love, Peace, or Passion?  Never mind what greedy deceptions our shopping-crazed culture tries to sell - those things are still up to you.

Image by Darnyi Zsoka via Wikipedia. 

The Thrift Shopper: A Web Forum for Thrifters

   

If you haven't visited The Thrift Shopper yet, go there now!  I'll wait.

Dee dee dee... Humina, humina, humina...La la la...

What?  Firewall won't let you see it?  Just too lazy?  Fine, I'll give you the Cliffs notes version of the site and then you can go visit it with highly enriched expectations!

The Thrift Shopper is a website jam-packed with content and fun for the thrift enthusiast. 

Run by Michael and Cookie, a thrift-savvy husband-and-wife team, the site features:

• a monthly webzine
• a nationwide nonprofit thrift store directory, where you can rate your local stores and see what's worth checking out for your next road trip
• a thrift news section, where you can read headlines about the latest developments in thrift culture
• an interactive online forum for shoppers to mix and mingle (and also create blogs of their latest thrift adventures)
• an interactive online forum for thrift industry professionals, who can track trends in their business and get feedback from others in the same line of work. 

Whoa.  Besides maintaining all that web content and working with advertisers and other thrift partners, this fabulous thrifting duo also are regular contributors to their online forums  - Michael is Good Buddy and Cookie is Cookie -  plus they both have day jobs, too!  (Cookie is a court reporter and Michael repairs car stereo systems.) 

I highly recommend the Thrift Shoppers forum.  You can chat it up with like-minded collectors and thrift-lovers, as well as post pictures of your latest finds.  And it's an exceedingly friendly forum, too - don't worry about running into crabby know-it-alls or elitist meanies - everyone is welcome at the site and I can't stop gabbing about how great it is. 

Which is why I caught up with them recently and to ask about the The Thrift Shopper site, their thrift-world musings and forecasts, and even their definition of the perfect day of thrifting. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

I'd love to hear about how each of you started your thrifting habit.

Michael:  An ex-girlfriend got me into it, and since then I've just really gone nuts with it.

Cookie: I remember my mom taking me to a thrift store when I was about 7 years old and I really loved it, but I didn't get serious about thrifting until I lived in L.A. in my early 20's.

How long has website been operational?

Michael:  TheThriftShopper.Com went online in January of 2006, but the national directory of thrift stores and the magazine weren't available until that August.  So we've officially been up for a year.

Tell me a little about the visitors to the site – where are they, what motivates them, what kinds of things do they collect, what kind of community has evolved from the site?

Michael:  Our visitors are from all over the U.S.  We even have users in Holland, Australia, Canada and Great Britain.  Our thrifters collect everything you could possibly find in a thrift store - from record albums, ashtrays, barware and dishes, to more obscure things like Chipmunks records and dog rabies tags.

Cookie:  I think a lot of our visitors love the thrill of the hunt, the idea that something really great is out there waiting for them. The thrifters on our site are always friendly and welcoming to newcomers.  They’ll pop in and say hi before we even get a chance to sometimes and immediately start a chat with them.

I'd imagine it's harder to run a business that has the word "thrift" in the center of it.   What kinds of partnerships, advertisers, and revenue are you looking to capture?   How is a thrift-centric business different from other businesses?

Michael:  We’re only planning on seeking advertising revenues from companies that our visitors will be interested in, like individual thrift stores, vintage or retro businesses, or companies that recycle unwanted goods.  We don’t want anyone to buy advertising from us if it won’t benefit them, and our slogan is “National Thrift Store Directory Advertising at Thrift Store Prices.” 

Running a thrift-centric business is not that different from running any other kind of business at this level.  Until computers replace cash registers on the front counter of every thrift store, I think there will always be people who are afraid of the Internet.  So in that way it’s more difficult to get thrift store managers to see the benefit of what we’re doing.

You have an industry section on the site  – how's the response been from people who run thrifts?

Michael:  The response has been slow, but we’re always trying to generate more interest in it.  We feel that it will be more popular in the future as our site gains more interest from the thrift industry community.  Our future plans include publishing an online book about how to start and run a successful thrift shop.

What's the impact of eBay, in your opinion, on the resale market?

Michael:  It’s been drastic.  Unless you’re the first of five people at the thrift store to see an item that’s worth putting on eBay, it will be gone before you know it.  Twenty years ago you only had to compete with people that owned their own vintage store in your town, but now one out of every five people in a thrift store would sell something on eBay.

Cookie:  I agree with Michael that things are really picked over now, but I also think that the gems are still out there.  It just depends on how much knowledge you have and how good you are at identifying the gold.  You have to thrift smarter, faster and better now.  It’s a pain.

Do you ever worry that by raising awareness of the joys of thrifting, you might be decreasing the available pool of good stuff out there for you?

Michael:  eBay has done that more than we will ever do.  I’m not ripping on eBay at all.  I’m just speaking the truth.  We’ve sold thrifted things on eBay in the past.

Cookie:  More good stuff will always come in, though.  It just will.

What's the future of thrift culture?  Will it go mainstream or is it by definition a fringe movement?

Michael:  I think by definition it will always be a fringe movement. There are legitimate charity organizations now that are trying to steer away from the word “thrift” and won’t advertise their stores as “thrift stores” in their local phone books.  They prefer to call themselves re-stores, second-hand stores, and resale outlets when thrift shoppers are looking for “thrift shops.”

Cookie:  I think it’s gotten more mainstream in the last ten years, for sure.  It seems like it’s really become a cool and hip thing for teenagers to do, especially if they redesign the clothes they thrift.  I think it probably won’t be fringe in ten more years.

Can you tell me your idea of a perfect thrift outing?

Michael:  Waking up at a 7:00 AM on a Saturday and going to a really great breakfast, relaxing over a cup of coffee, and then hitting all the thrift stores until 3:00 PM, after going to lunch and not being able to even stand looking at one more thrift item!  We'd have a carload of stuff that we didn’t even know we wanted before we left that morning.  But that’s why we do it.

Cookie:  I’d rather wake up at 10:00 AM.  And then ditto.  Plus, I’d like to find some things I DID know I wanted.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Get connected with more a-thriftianados at The Thrift Shopper.com and say hello to me over in the forums!

Never On Sunday: The Need for Sunday Sales

When I consider his Holiness the Pope most of the time, my fingers itch to rip off his pointy hat and smack him with it.

This comes from being a victim of Catholic Marriage Encounter Weekend and also from being a pro-choice woman who thinks both married gay people (and the Pope) have the right to suck it.

Anyway, now Mr. I-Wear-A-Pretty-Red-and-Golden-Man-Dress is pissing and moaning about our lack of respect for Sundays. 

Figure 1:  Pope Benedict XVI, fun-squashing turd of the globe.

Will somebody tell this irrelevant blowhard to shut it? 

It's bad enough that he's gotta manipulate and monopolize moral conversations worldwide, but the real crime in my mind is that there aren't more garage and yard sales on Sunday.

When it comes to yard sales, it seems the standard is "Never On Sunday."  Why?

Are would-be yard salers threatened with excommunication if they dare to roll their cast-offs down the driveway on the Sabbath? 

This Sunday, I was quite busy with the minutiae of my highly important Humanae Vitae and so it pained me to notice a few signs for yard sales that said - no shit! - "both Saturday and Sunday"!  It was wrenching not to attend them, especially since these sales dates need more customer encouragement, but I had prior commitments

Secondhand Nation Citizens, we need to start a movement! 

Sundays are fabulously important secular days that one can devote to long, leisurely breakfasts, vigorous, order-affirming housework and home projects, enthusiastic perusal of entire newspapers for no earthly reason and hearty, soul-filled outings dedicated to scouring the countryside for lovely, low-priced cast-offs. 

I propose this:

We should patronize those salers who dare to shill their wares on Sundays. 

We should have our own sales on Sundays, pointedly marking our signs to include SUNDAY, or perhaps writing "SUNDAY ONLY!" or "SPECIAL SUNDAY SALE!" in our newspaper ads. 

We should make a stark and explicit point of thrift-shopping en masse on Sundays - beating the churcher-crowd that always shows up around noon - and helping ourselves to the best merch. 

Sunday used to be a day of rest, sure.  But that was before the Labor Movement introduced us to a little something called "the weekend."   

Feh to this whole "Sunday is Sacred" nonsense!  Put your dogs up on Saturday. 

Sunday is for thrift shoppers!

Rainy Day at the Thrift: Savers Edition

I ran into my local Savers on Monday to look for a king size bedskirt.  Yes, I know they are at Target for pretty cheap, but guess what - the bedskirt isn't going to touch my body parts nor will it be examined in detail by me or anyone else.  So it can be used and junky.  As long as it's white.

Which all the bed skirts at Savers were not.  They were zebra print and jazzy purple and sage green and all sorts of wild nightmarish prints, but no white.  Dammit.  I shoulda walked out right then and there. 

But of course, it behooved me to continue patrolling through the rest of the store.  I've got my radar set on a rotating set of key items at all times - there's an interesting discussion of this here on the forum at The Thrift Shopper.com - so I cruised around looking for the usual suspects:  enamel ware, cake whips, pillow forms, crochet hooks, Oaxacan tinwork, non-overstuffed couches. 

However, it seemed like I was overcome by the meanness of my surroundings, like the time a few weeks ago when I inadvertently walked into a little girl's nasty fart cloud. Everywhere I looked there was something depressing and/or ugly transpiring:

• A man pushing an empty cart while picking his nose
• Several shrieking children swarming around their mother's hand-held basket while the mother hollered and careened around wildly
• A man with a mustache wearing very dirty clothes and sporting crust-caked fingernails standing in an aisle with his mouth hanging open

Then, while looking at the cookware, I accidently bumped into a man. 

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Ohhhhhhh," he whined in a voice ten times higher than Oscar De La Hoya's.  "That's ohhhhhhkaaaaaay."

I hot-footed it far away from Super-High-Voice Guy.  His face was too shiny and his eyes too unblinking for my personal comfort.  I dislike talking to any humans in thrift stores, as a rule.  Even when their voices are normally pitched, their visages matte, and their eyes fluttering at acceptable rates.

Another unsettling thing was how there were several customers making themselves at home in the wretched furniture department, parking their bedraggled asses on very undesirable chairs and decrepit, doghair-flecked sofas, reading books.  One of these customers was even taking notes.

This is all fine, of course.  Sit!  Read books!  Take notes!  But the way these customers seemed so comfortable and at home made my heart hurt.  It was like the poor people's version of lounging about in Barnes & Noble. 

Except, instead of soft green silky plush furniture, there was... a mustard-yellow scratchy tweed chair with bald arm rests. 

Instead of the latest Oprah pick, there were...Oprah picks from five years ago. 

(Long Rambling Aside:  What's with the surfeit of Stones from the River and The Book of Ruth?  All of those Oprah picks, melancholic tales of woe about retarded children or rape or AIDS or Haitian immigration or abusive husbands seem poised for a hostile takeover of Savers book department every time I look through it.  But when you consider the amount of tragedy these books contain, can you really blame them?)

Finally, the staff.  The staff looked like they'd like nothing more than a 14-hour siesta in their own greasy, sagging furniture department.  It made me wonder what they've been putting in their meth.

I dunno what it is with the staff at Savers.  Generally, they seem just one more insult away from flinging themselves off the nearest bridge.

Maybe it's the red vests. While I'm not a fan of staff uniforms in any capacity, vests seem to be a particularly cheap and cruel form of employee degradation, a sort of slap in the face to minimum-wage workers everywhere. 

The vest says:

"We don't even care about you enough to make you wear shiny, polyester, ill-fitting pants, like they do at Burger King.  No, we don't have the money to spend on that kind of spangly excess or the will to regulate whatever rags you show up in, as we're just surprised if you do show up.  Wear a barrel with straps for all we care!

"But we do realize that something aside from dire poverty must separate you from our clientele.  Hence, the vest.  Put it on over your own sorry duds, pop on your cheap button nametag and you're good to go.  No, of course we're not worried about people seeing your track marks or jail tats or cigarette burns on your arms.  Wear a mesh half-shirt if you feel the need!  We don't care! You probably won't show up after this shift anyway and that way, we will only have lost the vest.   Now, wipe that smile off your face, make sure you've got a close-toed shoe on and get out there and look round-shouldered and defeated!"

Wal-Mart makes you wear a vest.  Grocery store cashiers have to wear a vest.  Fran Leibowitz chooses to wear vests. Need I continue?

All for want of a white king-size bed skirt, huh?  I've worked myself into a sad lather for nothing.  A typical 99 cent Monday, and it was raining in my part of the world.  May your next thrift adventures prevail on a sunnier day than mine. 

New Found Glory: What You Gotta Get New

Okay.  So I'm into thrifting, reusing, recycling and saving money.  This blog makes that abundantly clear.

But in case you're saying to yourself, "Hey, I'm all eco and stuff, but not all of us are going to dumpster dive for our dinner.  And if nobody bought stuff new, then there would be no secondhand market, right?  Not everyone can act like you, Miss High Horse Muse of Re-use!"

In which case, it's safe to say you might consider leaving my blog entirely (clicking on my Amazon product pitches and buying some of them new, directly, of course.)

But, if you're still reading, be completely assured that, yes, I buy things new.  And while I might alley surf and eye my neighbor's trash stash on garbage day, I do not dumpster dive.  I buy groceries at Cub and SuperTarget and the farmer's market when it's open.  The saving money thing?  Is intentional.  You can't buy experiences like vacations, massages and concert tickets used, of course.  What else should you buy in the primary market?  Check out my short list of...

What You Can't Buy Resale

1)  Make-up.  Now, I'm sure some folks swap goods in make-up forums and buy high-end moisturizers and eyeshadows on eBay, but I am not one of them.  I don't want get pink eye from other people's mascara or deal with bits of foreign mouth skin in my lip gloss.  I buy new lipglosses every 7 days and new mascara every five years.   And I'm a drugstore make-up chick, too, though someday I hope to have enough scratch to buy the top drawer stuff.

2)  Socks and Underpants.  I don't think I need to explain this.  Surely, you can get stuff with the tags on - I'm not saying you can't.  But generally, it's just...ick.  Especially when you consider what kids like to do with undies:

3)  Lotion and Hair Products.  Okay, so maybe one time I caved and bought a ton of Bumble and Bumble samples I saw at a thrift store.  Hugest mistake ever!  It was terrible stuff for my hair, which is naturally the texture of an Amish broomstick, and I ended up with a frizzy, greasy 'do that made me want to cry.  I've learned my lesson.  Save the dollars and spend them on the good stuff:  LUSH, Aveda, Bumble and Bumble (from an authorized reseller, natch), DevaCurl, The Body Shop.

4) Cutting Boards and Cookware.  Man, buying cutting boards is just too dicey (tee hee, nice pun). Since eating a hamburger can cause brain-melting death these days, risking exposure to the evil that lurks beneath someone else's scratched-up surface is not anything I want to contemplate. 

And cookware is the same:  no Teflon Stir-fry for me, thanks.  Obviously, there are exceptions -- I did score a couple of Le Creuset enamel saute pans that were in perfect condition once -- but generally, if you need to fry something or cut something open, just go buy a new one.

5)  Brawls.  You know, the things you put yer boobs in?  Mine are sorta hefty.  See below graphic.   

(.)(.)   <-- not actual size.

My gals are high maintainance and only the best will do in terms of support.  Once a year, I steal a sack of gold from an ogre so I can buy a ton of new bras at Nordstrom:  Wacoal, Chantelle, Lunaire, Goddess, Felina.  I take care of these beauties and they last forever.  But you don't see these high-rollers of the lingerie world in my natural downscale habitat.  Mama gots to get her shower on and dress real nice once in a while, so off to Nordstrom I go.

6)  Magazines.  Okay, sure, some thrift stores sell current magazines and I confess to having picked them up if there's an interesting recipe or article.  But because I am a writer, I like to have stacks and stacks of the latest glossy goodness in my hands. 

(Long Rambling Aside:  furthermore, you may have noticed my magazine links and yes, dammit, I love Domino and Lucky, two of the best balls-out consumerist rags out there.  My favorite thing about Lucky and Domino is that they don't try to have a story on female genital mutilation right next to a nude Kate Moss covering her boobies with a designer handbag.  Instead of stuffing the "faux journalism" next to the fashion, Lucky and Domino get right down to the point, which is, of course, the stuff.  After a long shitty day, there's nothing like being lulled into dumb contentment by bright photo spreads of shoes and handbags that only bajillionaires can afford.)

For those of you who do like buying used mags, you're not completely bonkers.  Check out my bitchin' office trash can, fully made from an industrial ice cream bucket, coated wire and rolled up glossy mag pages:

 

Therein ends the list, which is surely not comprehensive.  Further sins in thrift and resale merch acquisition to come, so sit tight for confessions of some of my more unlikely, edgier purchases.