Thrifting—I Wish I Knew What I Was Doing!

My mom is one of the most creative and talented people I know. She can take one look at a picture in a magazine of a $400 dress and make it for $40. She can walk into someone’s house and immediately pick paint and new carpet that makes their house feel like it has had a major facelift or scour a thrift store’s shelves and see someone else’s junk and turn it into a work of art.

But I wasn’t blest with that talent.

Last Saturday, my friend Jessie and I decided that we would do a little consignment/thrift store shopping. I walked in to the first store and immediately started doing some positive self-talk: “there has to be something in here I need/ can turn into a masterpiece”.

Immediately, I turn away from the clothes. They are off limits for me while Heather and her rule of “only shopping name brand at thrift stores” seems to always reap results. I never come away with anything good even though I try really hard.

For this reason, I began my hunt in the home good section. Once again, the self talk: “mom always finds amazing crystal in these places let’s start there”. I started looking through the shelves and soon discovered that someone’s entire collection of state mugs had been donated to the shelves. “This has to be my treasure.” I picked up a few of them thinking they were cute and for some reason settled on a small souvenir mug from North Carolina. “This will be a great gift for my friend I am going to visit in Charlotte in a week,” I confirmed to myself.

I quickly moved on to the “higher end” items in the cases. There were a bunch of random items in the nicely cleaned glass. I kept trying to convince myself that I needed something. Suddenly, my surroundings didn’t smell quite right: ah dang it, that stupid $0.25 mug was getting some brown looking crap all over my hands. I quickly abandoned what I thought was my perfect item and turned around in boredom to discover the most amazing set of lamps.

You know those things were worth a pretty penny in the early 90’s.

What in the world?!

Of course, I snapped a picture and sent it to a few friends. I tried to convince myself that maybe with new shades the set of 4 lamps were a good deal at $135.

It only took me 2 seconds to realize that those things are terrible even with new shades. Then again if you owned one of these, those 4 carved pieces could be the perfect fit.

And so I walked out of the thrift store with absolutely nothing to show for my time spent there. And maybe with a hint of jealousy that other people always seem to have success. Turns out that I am still the girl that prefers having a garage sale over attending them.

Help! What are your thrifting tips for a newbie like me?