Adventures at Midlife

With the economy in the tank, perhaps it is time for me to blog on one of my favorite topics: thrifting.

When we moved to Chicago, I became a trailing spouse holed up in the top floor of a Victorian three-flat with two manic little boys and little money. I met a great woman, Susan, at church, who always seemed to have it all together. Like me, she was a refugee from the West, but seemed to have this whole Chicago big-city thing figured out, and she and her two children always looked smashing.

“So,” I asked her hesitantly one day, “Where do you buy your clothes?” I was expecting her to name Marshall Fields (RIP, sigh…) or some other pricey place, but I was surprised. “Amvets!” she said cheerily, and proceeded to take me shopping with her.

Amvets — or Savers or Value Village or Goodwill or the Salvation Army or Deseret Industries, take your pick — is where old things go to die, and often are born again. (I love that image. Maybe I can have some use beyond my expiration date!) I know there’s a certain EEEOOOWW factor about second-hand shops (unless they’re antique stores) because that’s how I felt walking into that first Amvets store on Halsted Street with Susan. I mean, this stuff has been…USED! Well, as she put it, so has everything else you already own, and a good cleaning will usually get rid of whatever the previous owner left behind.

It certainly helped that the thrift store in which I was baptized happened to be in one of the toniest areas of Chicago. All the Gold Coast girls dropped their things off there, and they had good taste. My first purchase was some adorable Osh Kosh overalls for my toddler — for $2. And they looked brand new. I was a goner. I soon became well acquainted with all the thrift stores on the Near North Side. The kids tolerated it because I’d let them pick out a toy (for a dollar or less) to play with — just as soon as we got home and I was able to wash it!

I have since thrifted all over the world: London, California, New York, all over the West. The resale stores are pricier but have better merchandise, and some places are just plain bad — their merchandise looks like it is angling for a third or fourth life. In fact, 90 percent of the stuff in most places is just junk or the wrong color, size or silhouette.

But, oh, the finds I have made: a perfectly beautiful, good-as-new pair of Cole-Haan dress shoes for $6 (retail for $150-200); two lovely black lambskin jackets (that only needed a dose of a $5 leather treatment I got at the shoe repair to look perfect) for $8 TOTAL ($200-300 each); an honest-to-gosh Balenciaga red silk blouse for $5 (who knows?); several nice cashmere and merino wool sweaters, including one by TSE, at $5 or less ($50-200 each); a teal and black Misook jacket for $6 ($200-300); a powder blue Jones New York Country wool double-breasted jacket (new with tags, just a little wrinkled), for $1 ($200-300); and —

Oh, don’t get me started. And these are only some of the recent purchases. It’s just too fun. I feel like I’m beating the system.

I do have a few rules:

• Keep an open mind. I can’t walk in looking for one specific thing or color (unless it’s pretty generic) because I usually won’t find it. I just look for good quality items that might work with what I’ve already got. Black is always good.

• If it doesn’t fit, it won’t be a bargain, no matter how little it costs. I’ve made that mistake too many times at full-price stores to make it again at thrift stores.

• Take advantage of any in-store specials. Wednesday is Seniors Day!

• Don’t shop for other people (unless they’re thrifters, too). My kids and The Spouse aren’t interested in my finds, and friends might get the wrong idea if they found out where I bought their birthday presents.

• The thinner you are, the better. A quintessential career woman I know, who is a size four, also is a thrifter, and she has a fabulous wardrobe culled from the racks and racks and racks of small sizes. The options for those of us who are a size 14 or larger tend to be, er, smaller. But it doesn’t stop me.

• Shop regularly. The turnover in these stores happens daily, sometimes hourly.

• Shop off-season. I’ll soon start looking for my Christmas outfit because the velvet items won’t be so picked-over during the summer months.

I have my standards (no pajamas or unmentionables, and the shoes have to be new or almost-so), but overall I’m happy with my wardrobe. Yes, I do shop at the outlets, and I admit I occasionally wander through Nordstrom or Macy’s with my credit card in hand. But nothing gives me a buzz like a real thrift-store find.

Update: Apparently, according to this CNN article, I’m not the only thrift-store junkie.