The Thrifting Lifestyle
Always an Adventure
You never know what treasures you’ll find at the thrift shop.
One of my first words was “Foley’s.” My mom likes to tell a story about taking me shopping when I was still in a stroller. She was pushing me out the door to leave, when I started screaming, “Don’t leave Foley’s! Don’t leave Foley’s!” She said she got a lot of questioning looks but no one stopped her from pushing me out the door. It was the 80s after all-a lot easier to leave the mall with a kid that wasn’t yours.
It’s no real surprise that adult me loves to shop.
Once or twice per year when I was young, my parents would leave me with my grandparents for a week to go off and do whatever child-free couples did in the 90s (have sex probably).
My grandma loved to take me shopping-something I clearly have always loved. Unlike my mom; however, she would always make a beeline to the clearance rack at any store we went to (mostly Beall’s, sometimes Mervyn’s). The cheaper an item was, the more my grandma got excited about it. Since I was a tiny little people-pleaser, I made sure to tell her how much I loved everything I tried on (even when I mostly did not). The tastes of a trendy, fashionable 11 year old did not usually align with a price conscious grandmother who had lived through the depression. I ended up going home with a lot of stuff I wore only that one time in front of the dressing room mirror of the mall’s discount department store.
All this to say, I was raised with the shopping bug and I was raised to love a bargain. At some point in my pre-college youth, I realized that I could have the best of both worlds-I could buy cool clothes that I wasn’t ashamed to wear in front of my friends and I could also save money. By thrift store shopping.
I don’t really remember the first time I went to a thrift store; it’s so much a part of who I am now that it is as if it has always been. I remember being extremely excited about the thrift shops in the town in which I was going to college, so obviously my passion started sometime between my learning to drive and being sent away on my own.
I thrifted a lot in college-especially when I was trying to furnish my first apartment. I got the basics-a couch, a dresser, a kitchen table and a bed-from a family friend. But I still needed all the other assorted items one needs in a first home. I went to the thrift store and bought my dishes, a microwave bacon cooker (seriously, if you don’t have one of these what are you even doing?), utensils, silverware and a hand-mixer that I still own 20 years later. I also bought a big lamp for my living room that my parents thought was “hideous” but I thought had Ah-Mazing 1970s retro vibes. I did have to replace the lamp’s fringe (they were not wrong), but I digress.
There was one time, in college, where I wanted to throw a dinner party-and not like a, “here are some chips and a cheap keg” dinner party. I wanted it to be nice, but I did not have enough plates or dinnerware to accommodate all my guests. I could have purchased paper plates, sure, but that was not the “vibe” I was going for. I wanted this to be a “grown up” dinner party. As luck would have it, my local thrift store sold plates for a quarter a piece. I bought enough that each of my guests could have a REAL PLATE for the dinner that I was woefully under-qualified to cook for them. The dinner party was a success and everyone was appropriately impressed.
That was 20 years ago. And I very much hate that that was 20 years ago because it makes me feel old. But I’ve loved thrifting ever since.I loved it then because it was fun and it helped my wallet.
I love it now because it’s fun, it helps my wallet, and it helps the planet.
I love clothes..and I want to buy a ton of new ones all the time. But I also don’t want to do it at the expense of our planet. I’ve realized recently that there are so many clothes and textiles that are already in existence-I don’t need to contribute to making more. If I buy clothes at the thrift store, it helps keep things out of landfills. Thrift shopping helps organizations get revenue that they use to really and truly help people in need. And I think it is incredibly, inarguably fun.
