The Earring

Book 4 Part 6

Confessions of a Second Hand Junkie

BY SYDNEY LANDER

My name is Syd, and I'm a shopaholic. My purchasing addiction defies the urban myth that all women suffer from mall dependency. I hate malls. I am addicted to pre-owned merchandise. My friends tell me I am the only person who can tell you the name and location of a thrift shop in any city I've visited. Almost all my treasures are recycled.

I spell heaven: G-A-R-A-G-E S-A-L-E or F-L-E-A M-A-R-K-E-T or even A-U-C-T-I-O-N. I'm on a first name basis with the owners of most second-time-around shops in the area.

Just what is the attraction of someone else's junk? I tell David it's budgetary; this satisfies his frugality. I can get four or five used outfits for the price of a new one, including ones for which I would never pay the "new" price. People with money to burn must buy clothes, wear them a few times, and take them to thrift shops. I am the beneficiary.

Not everyone is willing to shop in the places I haunt, but they weren't raised with a "new-to-me" attitude. My dad was a minister, and for my formative years we lived in an Indian village north of the Arctic Circle. Churches in the "lower 48" would send us barrels of used clothing to distribute to the villagers. We girls were villagers too. My sisters and I got to shop in the mission barrels.

When it comes to other pre-owned items, I can't blame my mission's upbringing. I like unusual things. What you find at the mall is "cookie cutter" merchandise. You can go into almost any home and find similar, if not identical, stuff. Unique things can be found in malls, but these exclusive items come with prices that exceed my budget.

On the other hand, at flea markets, garage sales, hole-in-the-wall junk shops, and auctions, you can often find limited edition stuff at reasonable prices. If you want to become a connoisseur of the pre-owned on a limited budget, you probably should avoid shops with the word antique in the title. Antique by definition means something that is at least 25 years old. Generally the shop owner thinks it is rare and worth its weight in gold.

I don't completely avoid antique shops. I go in to get ideas of what to look for elsewhere. Every once in a while, the owner will have something exquisite that he'll let go at my price, just because it's been there so long that it's becoming an antique while in the shop.

I am not the only queen of the thrift scene. My younger sister, Joni, has the same genetic flaw. When she and I get together in a thrift shop, we go wild. The savings then become imaginary.

When Joni lived in Oregon, I flew in to visit her for a couple of days. When it was time for me to return home, we left early for Portland so we had time to make a stop (translation – several hours) at the Red White and Blue Store, a huge thrift shop where everything was under $2. There were no fitting rooms because the prices were so low. After Joni and I filled several buggies with possibilities, we bought them, knowing that what wouldn't fit one would probably fit the other. She was a size or so smaller than I.

When we got to the airport, we went in the bathroom and began trying on clothes to see who got to take home what. The other patrons thought we were ding-bats, because we kept coming out of our stalls to model our latest finds and to trade stuff that was too tight or too loose, as the case might be.

I eventually got on the plane carrying a huge Neiman Marcus shopping bag filled with a new-to-me wardrobe purchased at the Red White and Blue Store for around $25. The bag was a nice touch. The thrift store recycles bags and just happened to give us one that made me look like I'd been doing some high-priced shopping.