The Nature of Thrifting (Part Three): Taking Sides

It's National Thrift Shop Day.

There are some annoyed people out there who feel it's wrong-handed to dump on limited-budget fast-fashion shoppers, and who blame that situation at least partly on the gentrification of thrift stores.

Let's pick that apart carefully.

Yes, thrift stores went through a change. I've mentioned before that, years ago, I'd walk into the Salvation Army store and things wouldn't even be priced. The woman behind the counter decided what she thought you could/should pay for the pants. A little strange, and sometimes reversely discriminatory (people with little money don't always look like it), but that was it. Then the old stores closed, and new ones re-opened in shopping plazas and places further out; the price of the pants became fixed, and, often, higher. The new locations and higher prices, as well as the rival for-profit stores, did somewhat change the customer base.

But as most people do realize about charity-based thrift stores, they do not exist primarily to give people with low budgets somewhere to shop, although that is one of their benefits to the community. They exist to raise money for their organizations, and/or to provide training and work/volunteer opportunities. If a thrift store decides to brand itself as a "boutique" to attract new customers, that may not help someone who just needs pants, but it may also be a matter of survival for the store. The rent has to be paid, and those of us living through 2020 can hardly be unaware of how little it takes to push businesses, including non-profits, over the edge. 

Thrift stores, in spite of the predicament they've been put into of having to figure out what to do with the mounds of donated stuff, are nevertheless proud of their ability to help "green" the planet a bit. If people can be encouraged to use some of the stuff that already exists instead of feeding the corporate sausage machine, that's a good thing, right?

But, the argument goes on...and I'm trying really hard to see the logic in this...the thrift stores haven't "done their job" (whatever that is) for people under financial stress, and so these same people are not only entitled to buy fast fashion, but should buy fast fashion.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. 

Does that argument not sound demeaning to you? More of an us-and-them thing than we had going in the first place? Me, I''m privileged to thrift a good cotton t-shirt...but you, you go buy the piece of new rayon junk. And never mind what the factory conditions were for the women who sewed the shirt, or what that gigantic order of shirts did to make the planet a bit worse off. 

I'm all for not judging where people buy their clothes. How would I know where you bought yours unless I asked? How would you know where I bought mine unless you asked? If you can travel to one store or another easily, that might even outweigh (to some extent) the benefit of, say, ordering something ecological online and having it shipped; or having to travel a long and inconvenient distance to a thrift store. I used to live next to a discount store, and it was very handy.

But supporting fast fashion, and bashing thrift stores, as a way to support human rights? 

No.

Take it from someone wearing a pair of one-dollar jeans.

It's National Thrift Shop Day. Help them go out of business.

I'm not going to mark National Thrift Shop Day by suggesting that everybody out there should go and buy something at a thrift shop (although you know that's one of my favourite things to do).

I'm not even going to mark it by suggesting that everybody should donate something today (although you know how much fun I have unpacking books at the MCC store. It's Christmas every week).

I'm going to suggest something far more radical.

Non-profit thrift shops...in spite of all the good they do by raising money for the ministries and charities that run them and by giving lots of stuff a potential second life...reflect something about our world, our culture, our attitude towards buying and un-buying stuff, that isn't a good thing. In a perfect world, ministries that run thrift stores would have to find another way to raise money, because people would be buying just what they need, using things longer, fixing what's broken, trading what's outgrown, borrowing what they can, re-purposing things themselves. And those organizations wouldn't totally mind that, I think, because any one of them accepting donations of Stuff must deal with an Increasingly Big Headache of Responsible Disposal.

So keep the thrift store of your favourite charity in mind today by not buying one particular new thing (besides food or other consumables). That way, when that one unbought thing doesn't arrive at the hypothetical end of its usefulness to you, you won't have to drive it to the thrift store. Nobody will have to unpack it; nobody will have to price it and hang it on a rack; nobody will have to pay the cost of the computerized cash register system and the credit card fees; or (if it sits unsold) nobody will have to bale it up and figure out where to send it next. By not buying something new today, you've created one less future thing-in-thing-out decision for a crew of staff and volunteers. Wasn't that easy?

(But you could also send the charity a financial contribution.)

In Honour of National Thrift Shop Day: This fall's clothes page

August 17th is National Thrift Shop Day!

I felt like I was planning in circles this time around. I like "dressing up" clothes, but my lifestyle is casual, and often dusty-sweaty (like unloading donated boxes of books). Those realities don't always blend so well in a small wardrobe. I tried making a capsule-within-a-capsule of jeans and t-shirts, but in the end it was easier to list everything together. Some things cross back and forth anyway. I tried a few other approaches, but they were all making me unhappy about what wasn't going to make the cut. Besides that, my half of the shared closet was very messy, and I couldn't figure out why. I don't have forgotten clothes from years ago, or impulse buys with tags still on them. But I pulled everything out just the same, and started re-hanging the definite keepers.

The answer to the second problem turned out to be related to the first. I needed more hangers. Not for the closet, because, it turned out, I had just enough space and just enough hangers to hang up everything that didn't fit in the dresser (see below), minus a few also-rans that are heading back to the thrift store. The real roadblock to my sartorial serenity was a laundry issue.

I do a lot of air-drying over the bathroom shower rod. On hangers, which have to be filched from the closet, which causes shortages and therefore clothes doubled up and hard to see. A-ha moment there: I need to buy some extra hangers just for laundry use, and I also need to not stuff the now-dry tops into the closet where they cause traffic jams.

As for the first problem: I renewed my vows to KonMari, and folded all my t-shirts into one drawer, from tanks to pullovers. I  folded heavy winter things into another drawer, along with the jeans I wear the most. 

Second a-ha moment: what did fit into those spaces is now my working wardrobe until whenever. I suddenly did not have to choose between this thing and that thing just because it wasn't in the plan. I could keep my dressy pants, my worn-but-comfortable sweatshirt dress, and all my purple t-shirts. I stopped being unhappy. 

See?

You can read the rest of the page here.