susan hayward photography

Eleven Thrifting Commandments

I love overalls. I buy all of mine at Deseret Industries Thrift Store for four to six dollars. Though you can't see them in the picture, I'm also wearing my favorite Danish clogs that I found at a yard sale for two bucks. My do rag is a re-purposed piece of material from a worn bedspread. Quite often when people compliment an outfit, I mentally tally how much it cost me. Often it's under twenty dollars, shoes included! 

I've been dying to share thrift shopping tips with someone. Perhaps a few of you out there might be interested? Here goes:

Behold, the laws of thrift shopping according to Susan:

 

 

Try on Everything Before You Buy

Even if you are absolutely sure that pair of orange corduroy bell bottoms will fit you just like they did when you were in college, try them on. I cannot tell you how many times I couldn’t get a pair of jeans over my hips even though they were “my size.” The same goes for shirts. You may be a medium, but that medium blouse in your hand might have been shrunk in the wash and that’s why it’s at the thrift store. You also may think you will look great in something—until you see yourself wearing it. You will save a lot of money and closet space by not buying clothes that don’t look good on you, even if they are really cheap. This tip brings me to the next one…

 

Wear Simple Clothing and Shoes

Because you will want to try on everything before you buy (see tip #1), wear clothes that you can easily slip out of. This means slip-on shoes, not lace ups, and a t-shirt and pants that you can whip off in seconds. (Better yet, opt for a skirt that you can leave on while you try on pants.) Tie your hair back so it doesn’t get all static-y from putting on and taking off shirts. Please don’t try to accessorize. You are on a serious mission to find bargains. This is not the time to look cute--unless of course you’re on a date, in which case you can wear earrings. Studs, not hoops.

 

Leave the Purse and the Coat at Home

Admittedly, I don’t follow this rule very well. But when I do remember to wrap my driver’s license and credit cards in a rubber band and stick it in my pocket rather than carry a purse, it makes the shopping trip all the easier. Ditto on the coat. The less you have to haul around and drag into the dressing rooms, the quicker you can get in and out.

 

Check for Stains

A lot of thrift-store clothing ended up there for a reason, most often not a good one. The most common reason for clothing abandonment is yellow armpit stains. I’ve had some success brightening white shirts by soaking them overnight in Oxy Clean and hanging them to dry in the sun. But this doesn’t work on dark yellow stains that look as if they’ve been there for years. No matter how cute the shirt, if the pits look like dog tinkle in the snow, pass it up.

 

Also check for rips, moth holes, bleach spots, and makeup stains on the collar, sleeves, cuffs, and arm pits.

 

People don’t always donate clothing because it’s damaged. Sometimes people gain or lose weight and change sizes, then donate the clothes to make room for their new purchases. You can find some great deals in this scenario, sometimes even new stuff. However, even if the heavens part and a ray of sunlight illuminates a mother load of Eddie Bauer jeans in your size, don’t rejoice just yet. Remember, try everything on before you buy!

 

Look in the Men’s Department

When I was shopping for a new pair of snow pants, all I could find in the women’s section was a one-piece number that looked like something you’d wear on a Seventies sitcom. So I headed over to the men’s department and found just what I needed. There are other unisex items you can find in the men’s department, say sweatshirts and jackets. Plus, it’s usually not as crowded there. Most of the men sit on the furniture or rifle through the bikes and broken vacuums while the women in their life shop. 

 

Try the Men’s Dressing Rooms

Saturdays are busy at thrift shops and lines for dressing rooms can get long. If you don’t want to wait, mosey over to the men’s department. Their dressing rooms are always open.

 

Take a Shopping Nazi with You

If you have a sibling or a friend who isn’t afraid to give you an honest opinion, take her with you. That way when you slip on that one-piece snowsuit and ask, “How does this look?” you can count on your companion to be honest and say, “You look like Chrissie on Three’s Company. Except you don’t have a chest.”

 

Many times my own sister has prevented me from making foolish purchases, like the time I almost bought an ankle length black dress that did nothing for my figure except cover it. She has also gently pointed out that my house cannot accommodate many more purchases.

 

Thrift Shopping Can Be Addictive

Last week as I browsed old China sets at Deseret Industries, our local church thrift store, a woman came barreling down the aisle, her basket full of who knows what.

 

“I buy all my dishes from Deseret Industries,” the woman told me as she clattered through a pile of dessert plates. “But you know what?” She stopped rummaging and leaned in close. “It can become addictive. Like you can’t stop buying even though you have enough,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.  With that, she stepped back and resumed shopping.

 

Because everything’s so cheap you might be tempted to buy everything in sight. This is fine if you also plan to get rid of a bunch of stuff before you even set foot in the thrift store. If, like me, you find yourself buying seven teacups and saucers  when the day before you had no use for such things, step back and ask yourself if you’d be willing to pay full price.  If things get really bad and you find yourself at Deseret Industries every day, you might need to start bringing cash to limit your spending. Or go to the library instead!

 

Do Not Go Every Day, But Do Go Often

As I said, you should not go thrifting every day. If you do, soon your house will get too cluttered and you’ll wind up with a house that looks like a perpetual yard sale. That said, you do need to go often. People donate to thrift stores every day. It’s worth your while to stop by frequently even if just for a few minutes. For example, last week I decided to buy a pizza pan with holes in the bottom. But the local cooking store wanted fifteen dollars for it, which I was not in the mood to pay. So I stopped by Deseret Industries on my way to All Seasons Market with the sole purpose of browsing the kitchenware. Lo, I found the exact pizza pan I wanted for one dollar. And it looked good as new.

 

Dig It

Think of yourself as an archaeologist on a major excavation. From my years of thrifting I have learned that it’s impossible to find what you’re looking for with a cursory glance at the shelves. You must move things around. You must look under things. You must look twice. Just when you think you’re never going to find something, you’ll dig through a pile of tea trays and find a perfectly good pizza pan.

 

When in Doubt Don’t Buy It

Nothing’s a bargain if you get home and decide that it really doesn’t fit and puce is really not your color after all. Listen to your shopping Nazi if she’s with you. If you’re alone, listen to the little doubting nag who sits on your shoulder while you try things on or put things in your cart. If you find yourself saying things like “I don’t really need this” or “All I have to do is lose a few more pounds and this will look great on me” are warning signs that whatever you are about to buy will feel like a mistake when you get home.

 

Also remind yourself to refrain from panic-purchasing. One of the problems of thrift shopping is the deep fear that you will never find a treasure to match the one that you should pass up. Trust that if you forego buying something that is not absolutely right for you now, something better will come along in the future.

 

Now that you are well armed with the tools of thrifting, I suggest you practice using them this weekend. Shop strong, Sisters.

 

Princess Di: A Thrifty Tale

1981

I’m nine-years old, wearing a flannel nightgown and staring at the television. It’s around  4 am and the house is so quiet I can turn the volume on the TV down to almost zero and still hear the funny accent of the man babbling on the program. Aside from the glow of the television screen, all the lights are off. I lay on the floor, my head propped up on a squishy pillow, hypnotized. I watch as a shy English girl named Diana walks down miles of red carpet in a real European cathedral. She wears a white satin wedding gown with an impossibly long train that reminds me of a bolt of fabric unrolling behind her, something I had seen many times while shopping at sewing stores with my mother. I picture Diana shopping for her wedding dress material. I hear the steady thump of the bolt of satin unrolling and unrolling with a steady thump, thump, thump, until Diana finally says, “Yes, that will do.”

 

On the television, Diana makes her way toward an old man with big ears, a stringy, sinewy guy that looks like the dud prince in a Disney cartoon. He is Charles, Prince of Wales, and I decide that he hasn’t yet changed from being a frog even though Diana must have kissed him by now. I wish that a more dashing young prince would burst through the church doors on horseback, declaring, “Come, my princess, my love, my reason for being, and we will live happily ever after,” at which point Diana would hop on the horse and ride into the afternoon sun with her real husband-to-be. And on the way out the door, she’d borrow the real prince’s sword and hack off that ridiculously long train. “Goodbye forever, Polliwog,” she’d call over her shoulder to the dud prince standing at the altar. But of course no one else shows up and Diana ends up marrying Charles. No matter, I tell myself, look at how beautiful she is. And just think of all the balls she’ll go to and the dresses she’ll wear, I thought with a sigh. Like all little girls, becoming a princess was a dream come true. Especially a well dressed one.

 

1987

My best friend Danielle and I follow British royalty like some girls followed teen heart throbs. Diana in particular enthralls us with her sophisticated yet shy demeanor. We have watched her grow from a naïve twenty year-old to a gutsy humanitarian who shakes hands with AIDS patients right on television. We follow Diana’s every move through magazines and TV specials about her. Princess Di, as we and the rest of the world start to call her, is more fascinating than any other Royal figure in the bunch.

 

But it isn’t her charity work that holds my interest. It’s her clothes. Princess Diana is a  fashion maven who wears sparkling evening gowns and dances with movie stars—without tripping. She looks good in everything from jeans to dresses. Her hair always looks perfect. She appears to be a real blond. She never gets zits from eating too many French fries. She’s slim and toned. She swims every morning for exercise (or so I read in a magazine). And she is stinking rich. In short, she is everything I am not. And she is everything I want to be.

 

And so I stop eating French fries (though to my annoyance the zits continue). I lose weight. I become slim and toned. I get a job at Hallmark Cards so I can have my own money. I work on my British accent, just in case I move to England some day. I have my hair styled short and feathery, just like Princess Di. But two things soon become apparent: 1. My hair grows too fast to do the Princess Di cut (it looks scraggly after two weeks), and 2. I will never be able to buy a designer gown on minimum wage. At least, not a new designer gown. And that’s when it occurs to me that I could buy nicer clothes if I bought them used. And so begins my adventures in thrift shopping.

 

1990

I’m in London as a student. I live across the park from Kensington Palace, although I’ve yet to catch a glimpse of Princess Di. In the evenings I wash dishes to earn spending money. On the weekends I hand wash a few loads of clothes to save a few more pounds (the money kind, not the body kind). And on Saturdays I shop for used clothing on Portobello Road.

 

One day I’m standing in the middle of a colossal pile of used clothes lying on the street.  I have just pulled on a corduroy skirt over my jeans when I hear Chad, a classmate of mine, call out my name. Chad wears expensive shirts and pants, always immaculately pressed and spotless. He brushes his hair into black shiny waves, trims and combs his beard into neat lines. Chad starts walking toward me and then stops. He looks at me with an expression I can’t quite place. I think he’s just noticed that these are used clothes I’m standing in. Chad looks away like he’s embarrassed, like when you wave to someone you think you know across the street, but when they get closer you realize you don’t know them after all and you’re stuck trying to pretend that you hadn’t waved. I want to hide, but as I’m in surrounded by boxes and clothes strewn across the pavement, there’s nowhere to go. Worse, there is also no way to disguise what I’m doing, which is essentially going through other people’s castoffs. Though I’ve always known I was not well off, at this moment I feel poor. Lesser. Lower. No matter how easy it would be for Chad to slip into and out of my world, it’s not so easy for me to do the same in his. It occurs to me that it probably never will be.

 

I wave with a limp hand and sagging smile. As Chad walks away I slowly take off the skirt, pay the vendor and slunk my way back up the street. Up until this moment I had been proud of my ability to get nice things even when it looked like I couldn’t have afforded them. Most of the time I don’t mind when the other girls on this trip bring home arm loads of new Laura Ashley dresses and leather bags from Italy. No matter, I’d tell myself. I can always buy those things used. But now I feel so tired. Of what, I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m tired of pretending that I can fit in with these kids. I realize that though I have been thrifting for years, this is the first time I’ve been caught at it. I feel exposed. Part of me wants to cry, while the other part of me, the shrinking part, knows that if I do, the effort will take too much out of me. So I do what I’ve done every night for the past three months. I go home to the dormitory, walk through the dining room to the basement kitchen and scrub the dirty dishes of my classmates.

 

Chad and I never mention the incident, though every time I wear the skirt I think of that day. I see him standing far from me, a wedge of sunlight spilling yellow on the street, Chad’s eyes wide and staring. And I see myself, surrounded by a jumble of used clothing, feeling naked even though I’m wearing a beige corduroy skirt over a pair of jeans from Goodwill. I wonder if Prince Charles would have proposed to Diana if he had seen her on Portobello Road trying on someone else’s clothes. Most likely not. He probably would have said, “Egad, Diana, step away from these people and get yourself something new.”

1991

Back home in the States I continue to wash dishes and live frugally. I manage to get back to London for a vacation. I decide that if it enables me to travel, I will thrift until my death, at which point I will specify that my casket be purchased used.  Upon further reflection I decide that a casket is one of those things, like mattresses and underwear, that should always be bought new.

 

 

2009

“If you write about shopping at thrift stores people will think we have to,” my husband complains when I tell him about my idea for this post. He believes in the philosophy that only when you lost your house and your job did you even consider shopping for used clothing. This explains why he looked just like Chad the first time I took him to our church thrift stores, called Deseret Industries, or D.I. for short. As I poked through a jumble of stuff on the shelves he stood behind me, refusing to touch anything, holding his arms close to his sides as if protecting himself from germs. After five minutes of this he declared the shopping trip over and went out to the car. Though I knew in my bones that there were treasures yet to be found, I followed him. Now I go to DI alone or with my sister.

 

But today I’m determined to explore this topic. I shrug my shoulders at my husband. “I’ll make it clear that we could buy everything new,” I say. “I just choose not to.” That seems to pacify him for the moment and he leaves me alone to my writing. He has come a long way from the early days of our marriage. Admittedly so have I. Now my husband has a list of gadgets and books he wants me to look for at D.I. or yard sales. And I’ve learned that you just can’t beat a new pair of running shoes or an occasional new dress.

 

Yet old habits die hard. I’m more likely to look for what I want at D.I. before scouring the mall. I’ve come to enjoy the idea of pre-owned clothing, pre-owned dishes, pre-owned books. Jeans that have already been broken in are far more comfortable than their new, stiff counterparts--not to mention cheaper. If your weight fluctuates like mine, it’s not a big deal to buy something that might not fit in a year’s time when it only costs four dollars. If your kid breaks a thrift store plate on his way to the table, it’s not a big deal. When you realize that whatever we buy could be outgrown, lost, broken, or eventually discarded, thrifting is really recycling at its best.

 

 

When I can’t come up with an ending for this essay, my sister and I go to D.I. in search of inspiration. Strolling through the glass cases where they keep the really valuable stuff, I find an old People magazine with Princess Diana on the cover, wearing a white strapless formal and a diamond tiara. Diana sits hugging her knees and smiling like she has just been laughing with a good friend. As I stare at the magazine, I remember a television interview with Princess Di from 1995 during which she discussed her failing marriage, deep depression, an eating disorder and crummy in-laws. Not once did she mention beautiful clothes. And then I thought of something else. A few months before her death, she auctioned off most of her evening gowns and gave the money to charity. Diana’s life hardly turned out the way I (or she) imagined it would, full of glamour and happiness. Even though she dressed the part well, in the end it didn’t matter what she wore. And now, somewhere in the world, women wear her used gowns to parties of their own.

 

In an instant, I’m back on Portobello Road. Hundreds of people are gathered in front of a boxy building with large windows displaying vintage clothing on faceless mannequins. I spy Chad across the street. I smile at him, looking him solidly in the eye. I’m wearing a huge poufy dress that I bought secondhand with satin shoes dyed to match. Apparently I’m presiding over the grand opening of the London Deseret Industries Thrift Store. Queen Elizabeth places a giant crown on my head and says, her voice booming over the noise, “I declare you Princess DI.” I wave with little circles of my hand. And the crowd goes wild.