Wednesday, February 22, 2012

How many thrift stores in your area?

I might as well fess up. I live in the BOONIES. I used to live in the small town where I work and my mom and I have our brick and mortar store. Then I met my husband, and when we got married I agreed to move out to the country with him. I used to be 2 blocks from both work and the shop. It now takes about 45 minutes to get into the small town where I work (which has 2 gas stations/grocery stores and a population of about 2,000.) Its another 15-20 minutes to one side of our bigger town, and if you want to get to Target, and other favorite shopping spots, it's almost 15-20 minutes more, depending on traffic.
So, its hard for me to get to our big shopping town very often, epecially with the price of gas.
When I go to to town it's for the whole day, including 3-4 stops for couponing deals and groceries and then to the thrift stores if little one cooperates. It can make for a long day of hauling little one and lots of grocery bags back and forth. 

The other day I was driving a different way then I normally do and I rediscovered a little family run thrift store I had forgotten about. It's in a rougher part of town and I'm kind of chicken to take little one there with me. But I started thinking about how many thrift stores there are in my area and how I need to rotate thru them more regularly.  I am lucky to have a lot to choose from fairly close and I need to take advantage of them more often.

I looked in the phone book under thrift stores and discovered in our town we have:
ARC- sometimes a little high priced
Goodwill- sometimes a little high priced and I've discovered an employee or someone connected there writing about me on the internet, telling how much I paid for something and how much I charged on ebay for it, so not so sure I want to go there very often, also pretty limited selection
Salvation Army- very overpriced in my area
a family run thrift store- haven't been there yet
a thrift store run by doctors wives etc that has higher end clothing etc, and has fill a bag for a price days quite often, I haven't been there since I was in college but am thinking I need to brush up on some brand names to buy and get my butt over there
a church run thrift store I've been to once or twice when they first opened, found a few things, need to go back
and then there is a great thrift store across the street from my hubby's chiropractor, where I purchased a set of books for $11.00 and sold them for 125.00.

I usually only go to the arc and the goodwill, but am thinking I need to expand a little. Maybe make a schedule of when I go to places.

My plan is the next time I go  and have a few hours I will go to some I haven't been to in a while, or not at all and see what they have.
How many thrift stores do you have to choose from?
How do you make the rounds? All in one day, once a week, daily?

What day do you think is the best to go thrifting?

2 comments:

  1. I live in such a small town. We only have
    one secondhand store; a consignment shop.
    There is a GW in the next town over, about 18 miles away, and is overprice, but sometimes you can find a pretty good deal.

    But, at the beauty salon down the street from
    my house, a lady has rented out one side of the shop and has a variety of stuff for sell. I check in there about once a week, and I have my fingers crossed that some really good vintage stuff will appear amongst all the "good junk".

    I live for yard sale season, and cant wait for May to get here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love garage sale season too. Although with little one along most of the time, I like the cart and one location convience of stores.

    ReplyDelete

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