Thrifty Living

Coming through Vancouver the other day, we found ourselves with a little extra time, so we stopped briefly at a fabric store where I managed to buy $45 worth of things I do not need. Whoever you are, you cannot really imagine how much fabric and thread I already have. I was appalled by these expenditures (as if it were someone else besides me who made the purchases) because I rarely go to stores where ‘shopping’ happens. I was taken aback by how easily I slid into the shopping habit.

I rarely go to stores other than a grocery store because there aren’t any stores around me that have much to offer. If there’s something I really need, I just buy it on the net and the net doesn’t really encourage me to look around and buy some other things just because they are there and I have yet more disposable income. I know that the government wants me to shop until I drop and that it is even going to send me some money in case I forget to keep doing it in May. If I get that government money, I will give it to the local food bank, where it should have gone in the first place, except that the GOP felt it would be better to spend it on things made in China. I hope you give yours to your local food bank, as well, if you do not really need it yourself for real needs.

Since I moved here, I have discovered a different kind of shopping, which provides a superior kind of entertainment than ordinary ‘shopping’ offers. This alternative shopping mode is the thrift store, which in Canada can be a quite different kind of institution than any I ever saw in the U.S.

First off, let me say that there appear to be two kinds of thrift stores, but in the U.S. I saw only the first kind. The first kind is the charitable entity (think Good Will, Salvation Army) to which people send things that are no longer good enough for them but are presumed to be good enough for the lower-class, poor people who shop at the charitable entity. Canada has this kind, as well, although here the Salvation Army store is called ‘The Sally Anne.’ These charitable stores tend to be large and have a slightly oppressive feeling, as if it is not enough that you are shopping there because you have little money but you also are assumed to be indifferent to any aesthetic considerations.

The second kind, the kind I’ve never seen in the U.S., but is very common in the part of B.C. where I am, is also run by charitable entities (the local Hospice group, or a hospital auxiliary, or a teen services program), but it is more like a formalized yard sale in a commercial building. The purpose of these stores appears to be to provide a place where the middle class can exchange their excess goods with one another at token prices in order to benefit some local public service. You send things that are perfectly good, worthy of you still, to this kind of thrift shop because you have more of the object, whatever it is, than you have room for. Your electric mixer has only one or two kinds of beaters, so you get a new one that has two or three kinds of beaters and your prior mixer is cluttering up your cupboard. So it goes to the thrift shop. And someone pretty much like you buys it and uses it until they upgrade. The thrift shop is full of things that someone has just upgraded or been given two of. Everyone I know shops at these thrift stores. It is not at all a class thing.

I shop there regularly and am amazed and delighted by what I get. It’s always an adventure, a kind of treasure hunt. This may in part be driven by the fact that I was born during the depression and have that kind of mentality. However, maybe not, because the Salvation Army-style thrift store rarely has anything that tempts me. It is possible that this middle class, yard-sale thrift store is a new entity since I left the U.S. proper, and now exists everywhere because of the Chinese decision to make more of everything than we could ever need at bargain prices. However it comes to be, it offers perfectly good silk blouses, rain boots, linen jackets, ski wear, fleece coats, specialized dishes, fabric of all kinds, sewing machines and accessories, silk ties, yarn, knitting needles, kitchen utensils, electrical equipment, picture frames, and antique lace, to mention but a few items that have come my way from the thrift store that is run by the local Hospice Group. And I rarely spend more than a few dollars: I think my most expensive purchase was $15 for a sewing machine.

When I go to a thrift shop, it is by intention, and any acquisition is a surprise and a pleasure. I go there to browse, to see what’s arrived. It feels more like recycling than shopping; more like rescuing than buying, more like leasing than owning because whatever I buy can be going back to the same thrift shop soon. It feels good! By contrast, absentmindedly spending that $45 the other day as a way to use up a little time felt like a genuine vice.