Thrift stores have never been my thing. I don’t like searching for at least one thing to wear, especially when there’s no changing rooms.
My friend Mabel, on the other hand, loves the search and discovery of thrifting. She has an abundance of patience. She will look at everything! Slowly.
One time we went to a thrift store and I looked through the cookware goods while Mabel hit the clothes racks. Count to 5,000,000 slowly and that’s how long she took looking through just one rack.
Not one to spoil Mabel’s fun, I ended up sitting on a couch that was for sale. I might have nodded off while waiting for her.
Bart, Mabel’s husband, is like me. When he goes grocery shopping he has a list and zips up one aisle and down the next. He skips aisles that have nothing that’s on the list. Same as me. Mabel looks at every item and reads the ingredients.
So, I don’t thrift with Mabel or grocery shop with her.
I don’t remember my mom dilly dallying when shopping for clothes or anything. She had a great wardrobe. She had style. When she moved to Southern California to be near me, she had two wardrobe boxes crammed with clothes that were shipped via moving van. Somehow both boxes of her clothes were lost. That’s when Mom began thrifting.
Amazingly her style didn’t change. She was like Mabel; slow.
My friend Penny made a great living from thrifting. She told me her story. “I’ve seen a lot come and go in the Thrifting world. In the early 70s I loved wearing vintage clothing, and that began my love affair of everything vintage.
“In the early 80s, what would become my first career, started with Forever Young Vintage Apparel. Fueled by my passion of everything vintage I opened that small store in Sebastopol, California. Of course, that was the era of abundance and things were really really inexpensive. I could literally buy something for $.25 and sell it for $10.
“Forty-five years later, thrifting is not just a trend, it has become a lifestyle and a career choice. In 2003, I ventured into the Consignment business in Minnesota and tapped into a gold mine. The reality is that people have way too much stuff and need a way to get rid of it. Hence, I opened a consignment store. It was the era before the Internet, where we were still using paper maps to go out on appointments.
“I rode a 20-year wave, opened three stores, had over 10,000 sq.ft. of sales floor and an audience and customer base that grew daily.
“That began to change with the advent of Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Google, Poshmark, ThredUp, etc. It felt like almost all of a sudden the Internet was my competitor, but there are still people who love the tactile experience of being able to touch things and see things in person.”
Mabel said the same thing about how “thrift store websites have ruined it for finding good bargains.” That hasn’t stopped her though. Among others places, she loves People’s Services in Lakeport where she got a free shower seat and a walker for one of her IHSS clients just by showing her IHSS card.
“I love thrifting,” Mabel said. “It has saved me a tremendous amount of money. I looked at places like Wayfair for a king-size headboard and found one at a senior center thrift store for $30 that has all the features I wanted from Wayfair.”
What’s a girl to do?…try thrifting once again!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes comments and shares. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
