Oh my word. Do you even remember this series? I wrote the first part ages ago. And kind of forgot about it? And to be honest I’m not really sure how it fits into my life right now because I’m desperately trying to not want to buy all of the stuff at the moment — old or new — but I absolutely can not stand the thought leaving this loose end well, loose any more.
So! To pick up where I left off:
Aside from having a clear idea of what you’re looking for when thrifting and sticking to hunting for those more classic pieces, I attribute some of my more successful thrifts to simply looking in the right place. Where you ask?
1. Large Goodwill/donation centers or centrally located local thrift shops. Some of my most successful thrift-ing days were when I was in college and would visit the Goodwill right off campus about once a month, sometimes even more often. I supplied a vast amount of my student teaching wardrobe (have I have mentioned that I got my degree in teaching?) this way. It wasn’t necessarily the largest Goodwill I’ve ever been in, but I believe it had the largest pool of donating areas. There were many a J Crew button down and pencil skirt that found their way to that Good will. And boy was I ever happy they did!
Try venturing outside your typical thrift stops to find maybe another that attracts a larger audience of donations.
2. Online thrift stores. Thred Up is one I’ve learned about in the past year or so. It’s truly the best thing since sliced bread. Thrifting generally requires rifling through mountains of cast offs to find gold, and when you’re a mama that has one or more babies in tow it can get tedious to say the least. Targeted searches on an indexed thrift site are pretty much a God send for a modern day thrift-er.
3. Ebay. I must confess I’ve had some awesome successes here, that gently used J Crew chambray for $10.50 being one of them… But thrifting on Ebay can be especially tricky because of the shops that pretend to be selling authentic overstock, and in reality are selling cheap knockoffs. When buying off Ebay I stick to purchases from individual sellers only. People that are clearly just clearing out their closets, or bought something final sale and can’t return if for whatever reason. These types of sellers are usually pretty easy to spot. They only have a few items listed at a time are hardly ever NWT (new with tags) or NWOT (new without tags) — but gently used.
Of course sizing is always a risk when buying on Ebay, so that is why I also recommend only buying from brands you are familiar with and know your sizing for.
Anybody have any other awesome ‘where to look’ thrift-ing tips? Do share.
P.S. I’ll be finishing up this series with How to thrift quality pieces for your closet, part III: how to look two weeks from now.
Also I will not be posting a dressing a postpartum body blog post this week and will resume with that next week — I have the next post drafted in my head but alas, it remains a bunch of jumbled thoughts so I’m hoping another week will let me sift through them so that they might actually make sense. ;)