I Heart Thrift Stores

Anyone who doesn’t regularly shop at thrift stores is dumb. There, I said it. If you like throwing away money, be my guest. I do not. I am extremely frugal and probably would still be a tightwad even if I had millions of dollars burning a hole in my pocket.

Here’s why:

These are some of the items I’ve picked up over the past week or so at ReSource York and Goodwill

I paid a grand total of $25 for this stuff. That’s actually a little steep for me (I told you I’m cheap.) but still not bad considering what it’s worth. One of my favorite things to do is look up what stuff I got at thrift stores and yard sales is worth, it might be a sad hobby but I enjoy it nonetheless.

The wooden train was $8 at Goodwill and the little wooden toolbox was $2. I bought them to give to Nicholas for Gotcha Day next month. (the day we celebrate the anniversary of his adoption) The train is hand-crafted, brand new, and has an artisan’s initials on the bottom. When I looked up wooden pull trains I found this one listed for $175! I had a hard time pricing wooden tool boxes without tools, so I’m estimating a $10 value for that.

I paid $10 for my antiqued white mirror at ReSource. It’s very heavy, in perfect condition and is going to look awesome in our downstairs powder room over the pedestal sink I bought from Craigslist. Overstock.com has this one on sale for $168.

The woven balls were $1 each at Goodwill. They are each a decent size. It was on my projects to try list to attempt making some of these, but since they were only a dollar I just bought them. Cute for fall decorating and super trendy right now, even Target sells these balls for substantially more than that. The regular price for two mini woven balls at Target is $16, although they are on sale right now. Hmmm…$11 on sale for two miniatures ones or $2 for two full-sized. Hard choice.

I got my white ceramic soup tureen for $3. Granted, it did not come with a lid (That’s ok I plan to use it for decoration anyway since I already have a white ceramic tureen, also from Goodwill, that came with a ladle and a lid) but considering that Williams-Sonoma sells this tureen for $139 I still think it’s a pretty awesome deal.

That means I got over $500 worth of stuff for $25 this week. I don’t know why anyone would pay over $500 for that dinky little pile of stuff, but apparently people do. Not me, though.

Thank you, thrift stores!