Memoir: Me Learning Thrift

Back in the cult years, I started my business as an editor/writer, but there were slow times in the business. I had time to spare, so I started another side business: clothing buyer. A secondhand clothing store in town asked me to “buy” for them; my job was visit half a dozen thrift stores to buy cheap stock for her shop. I had to purchase the clothing for less than 2/piece to make a profit as I split the markup with the secondhand clothing store owner.

I learned to shop thrift stores during my year in Indianapolis. It actually became my favorite pastime during that year–that and library book sales. They both kept me sane!

Mom would go with me on my “buying” days to Eugene, Oregon. We’d map out the St. Vincent DePaul, Goodwill, and other clothing stores in Eugene and just visit them all one at a time. I’d cruise the racks, pulling out everything that possibly could work, starting with the clearance racks (.50/piece helped my profits considerably!), and then we’d look over the clothing inch by inch, debating if we could fix the drooping hem or holey sweater, or if we could get the coffee stain out. Once we decided, we’d do one more sweep, trying to find other pieces that might be a better deal and we’d switch them out with the pieces until we had a collection of 100 or more pieces that I would iron, put on hangers, and deliver to the secondhand store.

I LOVED this job. Shopping at the time wasn’t so much a question of money earned, but a time when my Mom and I would talk as we searched through the clothing racks, sharing the time by just being together. It was solid gold time. I never made any real money from the job (probably several hundred bucks total after all was said and done) because the secondhand shop was losing foot traffic from other businesses closing around it (the downtown area of Albany, Oregon really suffered in the late 1990s), and then the owner decided to sell the store (she offered it to me, but I couldn’t afford it).

However, I learned how to find cheap clothes that year. And when clothes cost .50 each piece, you get to have a lot! It was a fun few months.

Now that life is so busy, I barely get to a Goodwill up here in the Seattle area. My goal is to get to one every three months, just to remind myself that sometimes the best times in life only cost .50. And that’s a Good Thing.

Love ya Mom!

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Tagged as: brilliant, Good Things, memoir