Who doesn’t need some good thrifting tips? We have posted on here many times upcycles, repurposing and recycles. Sometimes you can’t find the things around your home, so you have to pay a visit to the local thrift store, but if you’re not used to going things can get a little tricky. Here are some awesome tips from House of Hawthornes to help make your thrifting more productive and efficient:
1) Keep your mind open. If you go in the thrift store looking for a turquoise Fiestaware Disk Water Pitcher, then chances are you will be highly disappointed. Just keep your eyes peeled for vintage looking goods in general.
2) Go often. I have good days and I have bad days. Just because a store is a dud one day doesn’t mean that a person isn’t going to drop off a killer donation at that same store tomorrow.
3) Go early, but not necessarily when they first open. I find if I go first thing when they open that the shelves are a little bare. You’ve got to give the employees a chance to get the newly donated items priced and onto the shelves.
4) I find my best stuff on Mondays and Tuesdays. People will clean out their garages over the weekend and then drop off stuff to the thrift stores the first of the week.
5) Location, location, location. I’ve found the best vintage stuff in thrift stores in older neighborhoods. Older neighborhoods have older people and older people have vintage stuff (that to them is just old stuff).
6) I avoid the frou frou Goodwill stores that are filled with lots of new merchandise donated by stores. They have very few items donated by actual people and what they do have is very much picked over by employees. Only the highest quality stuff makes it on the shelves. I prefer the thrift stores that pretty much put out anything that gets donated.
7) Travel outside your normal area occasionally. Now with gas prices sky rocketing I won’t be doing this too often, but I’ll certainly stop by if I’m on that side of town for something else.
8) If you find a favorite thrift store and frequent it often, you’ll get to know the workers. My local store workers have given me tips on when the best times to shop there are, alerted me to future sale days and have even dragged something out of the back room that they thought I’d like.
9) Once I know a thrift store, I can be in and out in 5 minutes. I know where to go to see what I am interested in. I don’t dawdle. If they have nothing interesting that day I’m off to the next one down the road.
10) A bottle of hand sanitizer in your purse or car is a good thing. Thrift stores do not clean things up or wash them prior to putting them on the shelves. I tend to pick stuff up to examine them, so my hands get a little grimy.
Leave a Reply