See, Mom! Look What I Can Save!

I am a self-professed thrift-store junkie. Spotting a good buy gets my heart racing. I will dig, sift, climb, and linger until I feel confident that I have seen every last item and pondered its each and every use before I leave the store. Some days (but not often) I leave empty-handed and some days I leave utterly triumphant. Yesterday was one of the latter. I went to my favorite Goodwill in search of brown heels, because my dog had snacked on mine all day while I was at work. I left the store without the heels, but in possession of a few unexpected treasures that thoroughly thrilled me.

I cycle to work, so I love knickers. I also love them because almost no one wears them and that makes them even more unique. Knickers are not to be confused with Capri pants (gag). They are shorter and often cuffed at the bottom. Yesterday, I saw a beautiful textured fabric poking out of the overstuffed pants rack, reached in to pull it out and found I was holding a pair of Louis Verdad knickers in my hand, tags still on, with a heart-stopping price of $374. In my size!

I moved over to the jeans rack and quickly flipped through the Express denim, the tapered Levi’s, the bell cuts with frayed bottoms until my fingers felt the luxurious denim of a brand new pair (again, tags still attached) of Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit jeans. My size, to the inch!

I went to the dressing room and both pairs fit beautifully! The Lagerfelds, aside from possibly being the sexiest pair of jeans I have ever worn, were designed to be worn with high heels (or by a woman measuring 5’10” or taller), so I made my way to the shoe rack where I found an ever so gently worn pair of red Via Spiga heels that looked killer with them.

When I was trying on shoes there was a gentleman who had started conversing with me (there definitely are those types who treat Goodwills like community centers). He said, “Now certainly you could find a man who would be willing to buy you a nice, new pair of shoes.” I appreciated his sentient, but explained that besides the fact that I’m not chasing anyone’s money and the fact that I could buy myself a nice new pair of shoes, this is fun for me. Whenever I need something, my immediate reaction is “time to go to the thrift store”. It hasn’t been “time to go to the mall” since high school.

So here are the calculations I came up with.

Retail Values:

Louis Verdad Couture Knickers: $374
Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit Jeans: $220
Via Spiga Heels: $150 (price adjusted down $40 b/c they are not BRAND new)

TOTAL: $744

Goodwill Prices:

Louis Verdad Couture Knickers: $6.99
Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit Jeans: $9.99
Via Spiga Heels: $9.99

TOTAL: $26.97

I saved: $717.03

And I was out of the store within 30 minutes.

From my friends who don’t thrift shop, I usually hear that they don’t have the patience to sift through the junk to find the gems. But, if saving over $700 in less than thirty minutes isn’t a good argument for giving it a shot, then I don’t know what is. Which, I’m totally cool with because then, as they say, more for me!

Yeah, You Wish You Could Consume Like Us!

The traders in the room next to me are tuned in to Fox news for nine straight hours every day. They also fancy themselves sideline commentators, which makes it quite obvious to the casual observer that they are not President Obama’s biggest supporters. One woman actually called him Osama, because she “seriously couldn’t remember his name!” (…sigh for humanity…)

This morning, Fox was airing a clip of the president’s most recent speech where he stated (paraphrased from memory) “Americans, no matter how green you say you are, you still are consuming more resources than an average Indian citizen on a daily basis”. To which, one of the traders replied, “I’d like to hear from one of them [Indians] who wouldn’t trade places with one of us in a heartbeat.”

I rolled my eyes and my heart sank, because aside from the fact that he was missing President Obama’s point entirely, which I take to have been a reevaluation of what we truly need to get by in an age of dwindling resources, he was making an arrogant, and too common, assumption that everyone wants to be an American. Still.

I don’t feel the need to overanalyze his statement, and I recognize that we are blessed in many ways to live in this country, but the belief that America is the greatest country in the world is fading like a cut flower sipping at the last drops of water in its vase. And the fact that one of my fellow Americans would dodge the accountability inherent in Obama’s statement and opt for a rebuttal laden with such cocky entitlement is what worries me most about the fate of our nation.