Why I love thrift stores

When Robin was here without Julia, we went to thrift stores looking for a coat for her. We found one, and I also bought her a beading set (basically, a box of beads with some string) that she wanted, and that turned out to be quite impressively intact.

Now Julia is here without Robin, and Lisa has the day off, so we went over to see if we couldn't find some sort of a game for Julia. Also, the (thrift store) pajamas I gave her for Christmas are on the small side - which I kind of thought they might be when I bought them - so we thought we'd check and see if there were any that would fit her better.

Now. You can't just walk in there and pick up what you want. Luck is a pretty major factor. You don't get to pick the color, and sometimes pieces are missing. Prices vary.

But. If you are a Tucker or have access to one, you can do pretty well, especially by sticking to whichever color tag has the best discount that day. Sundays have the most potential, because one color (orange today) is 75% off.

We found pajamas (Lisa found the top in the boys' pajama section and showed it to me, saying it was too bad the bottoms were missing. Except that I had just seen the bottoms, over on the girls' rack), a video called Larger than Life (Bill Murray inherits an elephant and sells it to the highest bidder, but has to transport it across the country by himself. We'll see.), Julia's equivalent to the beading kit, which turned out to be a "summer vacation activity kit" (geared to third grade, but in fact containing mainly art supplies and stickers, plus a world-map puzzle to assemble and color), and - impulse buy at the register - a Madeline "1st and 2nd Grade Math" computer game (for the girl who passed the time on the drive over begging us to ask her math questions.)

Here's the contents of the World Explorer game. Slightly opened, but clearly never used:


My total? $2.66.