The Thing Is (The Return of Come Unthrifting With Me)

Right now all the Ontario thrift stores are locked down (again), so our treasure-hunting trips are not happening. Online alternatives are tempting, especially with many retail stores having sales and offering incentives like free shipping. However, I'm trying to hold out on shopping for amusement, and enjoy the things I already have, so I'm reviving the Unthrifting posts. (Total honesty: I did order a new tote bag to replace one I've used hard for two years; but it was on sale.) 

Lately I've been seeing ads for a very nice sweatshirt-fabric blazer. The thing is...I own a similar navy is-it-a-sweatshirt-or-is-it-a-blazer, that I found at a thrift store a few years ago.

The same company has sent me ads for their most recent take on a good-quality, simply styled jersey dress. The thing is...I recently thrifted a similar dress.

I often click the shopping links on Vivienne Files posts, which give helpful information (what's that sweater actually made of?) but which often involve stores and clothes much too cher for me. So now ads for the same stuff pop up everywhere I go online. Lately that means a whole batch of beautiful scarves, mostly florals. The thing is...I have scarves too. Most of them are thrifted, a few came from Ten Thousand Villages before it closed, and a couple were bought new somewhere else, and/or were given to me. Last fall I saw this pink scarf called "Poetic Nature Foliage" on the website of a Canadian store, and I ordered one along with more practical things like pajamas and turtlenecks.

Are you seeing the pattern here? (I don't mean the one on the scarf...)

It seems to me that many of us, when we're getting bombarded with ads and filling virtual shopping carts with clothes or books or whatever, could probably look through our own closets and shelves and find things that pleased us just as much when we first undid the packages, or when we first came across them at a fancy store. Or a thrift store. Or an amazing little out-of-the-way used bookstore. Or even at giant-mart.  (Don't discount the discounts. I have a favourite blanket scarf that I found during a giant-mart grocery trip.)

If you were to photograph some of these things beautifully, post them on a buy-my-stuff website, and then absent-mindedly come across your own ad, would that make you say, "Look! Just my size! Great colour! I want it!" or "That's a book I wanted to read again?"

This week I'm going to pull out a few of my own surprise-myself items, and (hopefully) get happy all over again. You can come too.