This Wednesday's Salvo expedition was to the Canandaigua Salvation Army. I found precious little this time, which prompts me to share a couple of my basic thrift-storing rules.
Rule #1: Don't have an agenda.
This is a very important piece of thrift-storing advice. If you go to a thrift store looking for one particular item, it is 99.9999999% guaranteed that you will find anything in the world but that one item. It also USUALLY means you won't find anything good period, since you've just jinxed yourself. Case in point: I need a new purse. The old one is too big (I literally lost a spatula in it once) and the new one is JUST too small to fit my Kindle comfortably. I am looking for something very particular here... I like bright colors for my purses, because my theory is that if it doesn't match anything, then it matches everything. I like to have two outside pockets, so that I can put my house keys in one pocket and my school keys in the other. I need an easily accessible cell phone pouch. It needs to be, as I've already mentioned, neither too big nor too small. So, given that I'm not only looking for something specific (purse), but I have extremely specific ideas about that item, you can guess how much luck I've had finding one. None. I have jinxed myself and am pretty much guaranteed to only find such an item when I stop looking for one.
So learn from my mistakes. Go thrifting with an open mind and no agenda. Sometimes it's even a bad idea to get a shopping cart, because you're just taunting fate and that's the surest way to be certain not to put anything interesting into said cart.
Rule #2: Sometimes you strike out.
OK, it's not a rule so much as a statement of undeniable fact. Persistence is key here, folks. People are always amazed my thrift store finds and say they never find anything and they'll just have to go with me because I'm lucky. I'm not lucky. I'm persistent. There are a lot of times when I go into a thrift store with high hopes and walk out empty-handed. It happens. But sometimes you strike gold and come out with a huge bag of name brands for $10. The only way to know which one it's going to be is to go. And go again. And go a few more times. And obviously, if you break rule #1, you're more likely to encounter a rule #2 kind of day. Don't let it bother you. Be persistent!
Anyway, I did find a few pairs of shoes to keep the drive to Canandaigua from being a complete bust. And they're pretty great shoes:
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| Charlotte Russe, $3 |
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| Kenneth Cole Reaction, $3 |
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| Worthington, $1.50 |
Rule #1 is important to keep in mind and it is my motto too.
ReplyDeleteI was kicking myself last spring when shopping for Cami's "Music Man" boots. We ordered an awesome, perfect, bargain pair in her size from Ebay, which turned out to be about 2 sizes too small when she received them actually tried them on. :(
This leads to Rule #2, which I totally agree with as well. However, by the grace of the thrift gods, I totally lucked out at my first stop - the Webster GoodWill - and found a pair waiting on the racks - prob because that vintage boot style that was so popular in the late 80's (yes, I wore them proudly) is not so high in demand these days. But there they were. Good condition, priced at a few dollars. Cami's. You can reminisce with pictures here: http://twhitney.blogspot.com/2011/03/music-man.html