A Good Day at the Thrift Store

As many of you know, I used to be a huge thrift shopper. I'm still a thrift shopper, just not a huge one. Now I'm just a normal-sized thrift shopper. Hard economic times have made me acknowledge that thrift shopping really doesn't save me much money. Not shopping at all is what saves me money. But every now and then, I need to splurge a little, and thrift stores have been a good friend to me in those moments.

Back in May I had this great plan to take my kids to the thrift store once a week throughout the summer and let them pick a small toy.

Hello! Dumb idea!

It took three minutes into the first trip for me to throw that plan out the window. Daisy is easy as pie to please at the thrift store, but Nicky wants to buy every stupid, piece-of-junk, large, broken toy they have. He'll fall to his knees and beg for me to buy him HALF AN AIR HOCKEY TABLE. Never mind the perfectly good Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure I find and enthusiastically wave in his face. He hops from one broken toy to the next - anything that requires batteries, a remote, or is missing a thousand parts.

And then it's, "WHY CAN'T I HAVE THIS??"

And I have to give him this awful lecture about how we don't need to buy any broken toys because we have enough of them at home.

So we do not go to the thrift store once a week. Oh, no, no, no! We do not!

But we went today, and even though I still had to deny Nicky a bazillion ridiculously priced broken toys, I would consider today's venture a success.

(It's been a long time since I've had a good thrift store day - hence the post, I can't contain my joy!)

First off... a miracle.

If you've ever tried to buy second-hand jeans for a boy over the age of three, you probably know how impossible it is (unless you like corduroy, slacks from the 80's, or carpenter jeans). Pants have a three-month life span in our household, so they are never left in any condition to be passed on or saved for another child (save a single pair of jeans from Gymboree that I was able to box up this spring - a fluke, I'm sure). I believe this is the case for most of the boy population as there are NEVER any pants in Nicky's size at the thrift store.

Today, though, I nearly peed from excitement because there was a pair of size 6 jeans on the rack, AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A HAMMER LOOP!!

Hot dang!

(They also had a shocking amount of size 5's - too small for our needs, but someone out there needing size 5's is in for a treat!)

I also bought a shirt and a pair of jeans to put away for Daisy for winter.

SCORE!!

The clothes justified my trip to the thrift store - heck! Nicky's jeans, alone, made it worth the hour of scavenging since they did, in fact, save us money in the long run.

I made up for it by buying a bunch of stuff we don't need:

And, gosh dang! It was fun!

We came home with a Cinderella crown, a Dora ballerina, a reversible Cinderella/Belle doll, a Belle doll, one of these, two wire mesh buckets, LIFE, a box of Rescue Heros action figures, and two plastic racquets for my children to beat each other with.

I stood in line for an extra long time so I could get the cashier that sometimes cuts a break in the prices. She overcharged me 50 cents for the Dora doll, but she made up for it by only charging me for one racquet and one bucket. Overall, she saved me a whole buck! 

I love that woman!

So my kids got a little spoiled today, but for less than $20, I don't feel guilty about it.