5 Benefits of a Community Thrift Store

Having twenty dollars to spend on a new outfit can be challenging unless you go to a thrift store, where you can find a pair of shoes for five bucks, a dress for seven and some jewelry for three. You actually have some cash left over for ice cream on the way home. Besides staying on budget, shopping at your local thrift store enables you to support a local business and its employees and continue the reusing of merchandise. Thrift stores are second-hand stores where you can donate your unwanted items when you are moving or cleaning out your home.

1. Give Objects a New Life

There are some items in your home that you have outgrown or simply do not want anymore. Instead of throwing them away and adding to our country’s landfills, you can donate your unwanted objects to a local thrift store and give them a new life with another person, as well as have a tax write-off the next year. Donation tracking can provide you with an receipt and help you schedule your drop-off. Every time you donate an item to be resold you are making a choice to help our environment and the community you live in.

2. Provides Employment and Training

Local businesses like thrift stores hire local people to work there and keep the money spent in local pockets. Skills sets that are taught and utilized at these stores include math and money-handling, stocking, sorting, customer service, repairing, cleaning and tagging. Thrift stores can be training grounds for employees who have not yet learned or mastered these skill sets and, once perfected, will benefit the employees throughout their careers. By providing jobs and training, thrift stores make communities a better place for those who live there.

3. Saves Shoppers Money

Buying a pair of shoes, dress and jewelry at a department store or other type of new retail store will undoubtedly cost more than twenty dollars. One nice pair of shorts could be that much, and there is nothing wrong with that, but if you want to save money, then shopping at thrift stores will help you do so. It may cost you more time to shop in a thrift store than in other stores because every item is unique and you have to sort through the racks to see if there is anything desirable.

4. Sources for Treasure Hunting 

Imagine finding a pair of jeans in your size on the rack at a local thrift store and seeing not just one tag on it, but two, and the second one is from the original store showing the full price that was paid. You found a brand new pair of jeans for a fraction of the cost and that is what you can consider a hidden treasure. You need a new desk for your teenager and the online prices of a new one seem a little excessive so you stop in at the local thrift store to see what they have. Thankfully, there is an old wooden one that just needs a little love to make it perfect. Thrift stores are treasure hunting grounds for you if you are good at repurposing items.

5. Fosters Local Partnerships

Many local thrift stores partner with charities or are the income source of the charity itself. Some veteran groups or other local causes will run a thrift store to fund helping their members. Every time you shop at a store like this, you are supporting an important cause and doing more than just saving money. You are winning by finding what you want at a great price and your community is winning by receiving your financial support and passing it on to those in need.

You get to choose how and where you spend your retail dollars, and by choosing to support a local thrift store, you are keeping money in the local economy, recycling merchandise and not adding to landfills, saving money and supporting local charities and employees. You may want to go back each month to see what new items have been donated because every trip to a thrift store is a unique treasure hunt and adventure of your own making.