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There's no shame in secondhand Nov 11, 10:17

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I’m a thrift store junkie. Let me loose in the Salvation Army with $50 and I’ll come back with all kinds of goodies to play with. I’m not ashamed of my thrift store love, far from it, I embrace it. I just plain love shopping for secondhand things because it’s more fun than shopping for new. There are obvious exceptions, I don’t buy my mattresses, underwear or shoes from secondhand shops. One of the first rules of junk hunting is that you have to be picky, if it isn’t quality then move on and find something that is.

Items I’ve gotten secondhand

About 10 years ago we got a freezer that up until a few years ago ran perfectly. It kept the meat, fruits and veggies we stored in it nice and cold and it was about 30 years old. When my parents couldn’t afford a washing machine they bought an old beat up one secondhand. It’s over thirty years old and in spite of the fact that makes funny noises and looks like it had an encounter with the wrong side of a baseball bat, it runs perfectly. 16 years ago my parents bought one of the first Maytag computerized washing machine and dryer sets. The washer ran for about 10 years before it gave up the ghost and died. In the months before it died I swear you could’ve put warm water in the toilet bowl and used it as a foot massager, it shook, rattled and rolled that badly. My parents spent about 1k for the set. We still have the dryer, but it’s near death as well (we’re hoping it will run until we get a new place).

The idea that used things will somehow break down on you immediately is an absurd one. Yes, if you buy something that looks beat up and well used then it’s not going to run for that long. However, in this status conscious world people throw things away before they have to, to “keep up with the Jones’.”

You can sometimes find some really good things if you just look. If I needed a new fridge and I couldn’t afford one, and trust me I can’t at the moment, I’d buy secondhand. New stove? Secondhand. My microwave is a big huge conventional oven, about 15 years old, that heats food up better than the expensive microwave that crapped out on me (it was replaced twice with the same model within 4 years). If it either heats up my food or keeps it cold then I honestly don’t care. I’m pretty sure that if it looks clean, and I clean it, then it’s not going to give me herpes.

There’s no shame in secondhand, but there is shame in raking up debt because you need new things to keep up with some kind of social standard. Newsflash: There is no standard! You don’t need a new living room set, nor do you need a brand new chair. My rescued chair is better than the chairs I looked at in Leon’s. My mothers easy chair is comfy and it’s an ugly old plaid model from the 70’s (I swear though, it’s going to burn some day because it is so damn ugly, comfyness be damned). If you can afford it and still have some left over then go for it. But before you plunk down money and commit to something you probably can’t afford do me a favor: Stop and think about what you’re doing. Think about what you can buy yourself or your family for that money. Is it a necessity item? Can you go without? Is there a suitable alternative? It’d be great if we were all rich enough to afford brand new everything, but the cold hard reality is that most of us can’t. And most of us are spending too much on things we don’t need because we’re in love with the fact that it gives us a certain social standing. At the very least in our minds. “Oh hello, have you seen my new Nikon D40x? See the pretty pictures that aren’t that much different from my old camera?”

Don’t get me wrong, there are some things that you need to buy new, underwear, socks and shoe insoles being some of them. There are plenty of things that you can buy used, though, and use the money saved to buy fancy things like food and a roof over your head. Call me crazy, but that brand new dining table won’t provide much shelter when it comes time to pay the mortgage/rent and you can’t. So why not go for the old metal top table with pull out wings? $50 at a consignment shop downtown! It’s signed by the designer and it’s quite possibly the coolest table I’ve ever seen (the leafs are stored inside the table with springs).

My all time favourite baking sheet is the one I picked up for $2 at the Salvation Army. It matches the smaller baking tray my mother inherited from her mother and it heats pizza’s up perfectly. Unlike the new cookie sheet I got burns my cookies and don’t even get me started on what it does to my pizza’s. So why spend $20 on a new cookie sheet when I have a perfectly good cookie sheet that does a better job than it’s newer, more expensive counterpart?

I don’t have money to burn, I’m poor and living beyond my means would make me ashamed of being poor. Would I like to have a brand new $5,000 bedroom set? Sure! Who wouldn’t? I’d love that and a new top’o‘the line firm mattress would be super. I can’t afford all that though, so why put myself through the hassle and stress of pretending I can? And I bet that my old bed frame (did I mention it has a headboard and footboard and it’s cast iron?) could beat out any new bed frame out of Leon’s any day.

thrifting

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