Thrift stores get scoffed at, made fun of, treated like second-class citizens, and worse. There is one thrift store where I live that sees its busiest time of year at Halloween! But your local thrift store has so much more to offer you than gardening clothes and costume material.
My favourite place to shop is the Salvation Army Thrift store. This store has been a revolving door for my family as we bring clothes the kids grew out of, then buy what they need. One time, a pair of jeans my daughter found ended up going back to the thrift store a couple years later, still in wearable condition!
We have discovered that living in a an affluent city such as Kelowna means that people give away the most amazing things! I have a long fur vest that I paid roughly $25 for one year, that would have cost 5 times that new on a department store rack. My daughter found a two-piece winter coat that allows her to remove the inner lining to use as a spring jacket in its own right. We paid less than $15 for it at the store that gets halloween business. A blender I bought from the same store a couple years ago is still working fine. The toaster I’ve written about twice now, was bought from the Salvation Army Thrift Store, meaning it was used when we got it, and all these years later it finally died!
If you’re concerned about brand-name clothing, my daughter just recently picked up a Levi’s and another pair of designer jeans for roughly $5 each at Salvation Army as well. You seriously never know what you’ll find when you show up, but the quality of stuff people give away will blow your mind!
Next time you need to go buy another pair of jeans, tops, skirts, yarn, dishes, linens, furniture even, check out your local thrift store first! A set of dining chairs fits my redone table top extremely well!
There is no need to hit department stores unless you need an item “yesterday” or can’t find it in the second-hand stores by the time you need it! $40 formerly spent on a single pair of jeans will get you several pairs plus a few shirts to go with them.
Help your wallet smile and take advantage of the amazing generousity of others who give away name-brand stuff, sometimes with the tags still on. Dress well for a fraction of the price!
Generally, no-name and white label products are cheaper than their brand name cousins, because packaging is simpler and not bearing labels from products with high reputations. The more highly a label is regarded, the more companies charge for their products. No-name and white-label get rid of the added cost of reputation. Many food packing companies package their food for more than one brand. This was brought home to me in a big way when comparing Jaimeson vitamins to Exact vitamins at the store I shop at. I was specifically looking at Vitamin C. The tablets in the Exact brand bottle tasted and looked like the tablets in the Jaimeson brand bottle.
The first thing you need to do is assess your daily travels, your weekly travels and your monthly travels. There might be something you only do twice a month, but it has to fit into your daily routine in order to make the best use of the gas you are paying for. You might only engage in a given trip once a week, but it too has to fit into your daily travel routine.
I was just talking to a co-worker at my church about “due dates” and “expiry dates”. She was sharing how someone she knows regularly tosses items in her fridge and pantry simply because the expiry date has come and gone. Both of us shared how we’ve seen milk last up to two weeks beyond it’s apparent due date, yet also seen milk expire well before its due date. Consequently, I am inclined to agree with the “experts” mentioned in this article that your own nose is a far better judge of the state of a piece of food than the dates given on the package.
The Germans weren’t just known for their precision and careful attention to detail. They were also known for being quite thrifty, inventive, and improvising whereever needed. These recipes involving stale bread are just a few of the kitchen examples I have learned thanks to these international cookbooks in my collection. Because of their example, I can no longer tell you when a cookie tastes stale, when crackers have gone stale, when dry cereal has supposedly gone stale, etc. My kids now fail to see the importance of keeping dry foods sealed because they can’t tell the difference either. When we hear of others complaining about stale dry goods, even within our own extended family, we find ourselves wanting to look at them strange while trying to remain polite.