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I recently moved to a new city, and I can't believe how many thrift stores there are here. There are 15 Goodwills, plus Savers, Salvation Army, and dozens upon dozens of independent thrift stores.
In my old small town, we had one Goodwill and one Salvation Army, both overpriced and picked over. And the clothes were often in poor condition.
Goodwill here has both boutiques (with better quality items priced higher than their regular stores) and clearance centers, which feature huge bins of clothing and housewares that you paw through, then pay by the pound.
I'm not sure how they determine what goes to clearance, but items don't have price tags, so I assume they never went to a regular goodwill store. The clothing I've looked at doesn't seem to be damaged or smelly.
The clearance centers are usually pretty busy, and shopping carts are piled high at checkout, while the boutiques are nearly empty.
I love the variety at thrift stores, you never know what you'll find.
When the average person drives up to their Goodwill or Salvation Army, a fair amount of the donations are thrown away because it’s broken/worn out or dirty.
I’m not sure how long that they’ll leave things on display for, but they wait quite a while before the next step. They’ll then donate unsold goods that are in decent shape to places such as homeless or women and children's shelters. If for someone reason, they don’t want them, then stuff will be donated to developing nations or recycled.
This week I've really cleaned out closets and drawers of clothing. Didn't realize how many old, out of date, worn, holey some of them were....the ones with holes etc. I just tossed but that leaves a lot of clothing to donate.
I read once that too many clothes end up at Goodwill, Salvation Army etc. and that they sometimes sell them in bulk to other countries to make into other products.
Anyone else heard that?
One time a charity heard a place needed bandages. So they sliced up a bunch of sheets to make bandages out of and sent them off. They found out later, the need had been filled, so those bandages were sewn into blankets.....
We donate a lot of clothes and household items to Goodwill. We also buy a lot of items there as well. I have gotten some incredible deals there but you have to be very patient because the good stuff is hard to come by.
The one thing that galls me is here there are people that make a living selling on EBay the stuff they get for cheap at Goodwill. I’ve seen employees that set bins of good stuff aside so their “pickers” can have first dibs at it. I know for a fact that that is against Goodwill policy, yet it happens more than you think it does. Same for employees hiding things in the back and saving it for themselves. There are crooks and thieves in all places I guess.
Goodwill actually throws out tons of clothing in their dumpsters. Many used clothing winds up in landfills. Even third world countries can now be picky about what kind of clothing they will accept. There is too much clothing in the world and it's being mass produced far too rapidly. I'm trying to avoid buying new clothing altogether and just continuing to wear what I have as long as I can. I don't want to support the fashion industry, either.
Needle,thread and creativity need not deter some from investing in thrifty finds.
Now suddenly the beggers are chosey?
Go lose it all from flood.or catastrophy. ..then tell me how the estate clothes are just too outdated.
I assure you that not one family who lost it all ever said...no thanks! When offered even a stained or missing button shirt.
I have no idea why our goodwill slaps $15 on a name brand shirt when it was freely donated...then slaps 2$ on another shirt. All that stuff is free to them to pure profit from . Make it simple. All shirts 6$ ..all pants 4. That would end this silly pricing matrix.
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