Jenyfer Matthews

One of my favorite things to do is haunt thrift / consignment shops – 1) because I love a good deal, and 2) because you just never know what you’ll find. It’s just lucky that even the tiny little town that my mother lives in has two thrift stores.

I didn’t have as much time to browse as I would have ideally liked and I had to keep my limited remaining packing space in mind, but I still managed to find some fun things. Unpacking was that much more fun for gloating over my goodies.

One of the thrift stores is attached to the local recycling center and it isn’t very particular about what people donate, but since it is conveniently located they are always getting new things. Because of the never ending donations, things are priced to sell. I found:

A “vintage” Corning stainless steel pie spatula with serrated edge – $0.35 (made in the USA so you know it’s old!)
A girls tennis trophy – $0.35
A pair of denim shorts for my son – $0.50
A pair of stone colored chinos for my son – $0.50

Limited Too reversible windbreaker my son chose
St. John’s Bay cotton blouse with 3/4 sleeves in scarlet (me)
a wine purple cotton blouse from The Gap (me)
an Adidas tshirt in lime for my daughter
a pumpkin orange Cherokee golf shirt for my son
ALL OF THE ABOVE FOR $3 on “bag day”

A linen skirt in variegated red / purple tones (me)
A pair of red leather NEW Aerosole sandals (me)
Sponge Bob t-shirt for my son
Underarmor sport shirt in coral for my daughter
A big, floppy stuffed dog for my son
ALL OF THE ABOVE FOR $1 on “bag day”

I love the red sandals because they are comfortable and fun, but even more because they only cost me $0.20! Who could not love a deal like that??

And I can’t wait to use my new pie spatula

I definitely wasn’t looking for a new blog to follow, but this one was just too good to pass up. I ran across the link on the Paperback Writer blog this week. Called Less is More, it’s the blog of a SAHM who is pledging not to buy anything new (retail) for an entire year. It’s early days yet, but by her report, so far so good.

I suppose one of the reasons that I am interested in this blog is because I myself love to make due with what’s at hand rather than go out and spend money all the time – and not only because I’m in Egypt and my options are somewhat limited! Using something that you already have or making something new out of something old is (for me) a satisfying process.

As a result of reading this blog, I learned about another really cool sounding thing called The Freecycle Network – a nonprofit organization dedicated to “reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills”. I really love this idea! I do this on a very informal basis every time I pass along my children’s clothes to someone with young children. Imagine having an entire community with whom to do trades.

In our crunched economy, being a bit more circumspect about spending money isn’t a bad thing. No matter what the economy is like, recycling just makes sense.