KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

greent

What a lovely idea to do with your leaving gift money, MMF! x

Floss

When we cleared my late mum's home the local hospice benefited as they had cared for her. They also got a lot of my excess stuff when I moved 50 miles into my now DH's home, as did his local hospice from all the duplicates!

PollyWollyDoodle

I'm afraid I choose the nearest CS shop to where I can park! Ours are all on the local High Street and although parking nearby and walking is ok when you're buying stuff, it's not useful when you are staggering in laden with a boot's worth of carrier bags. I agree prices sometimes seem high but as Greenbee says, they have a duty to maximise what they can get for donations. I'm just happy it's not in landfill.

I cut up old knicks, bin the narrow bits and save the biggest pieces in my own ragbag for polishing etc.

GreyQueen

Oh, I agree with the charity's duty to maximise the value of its donations for The Cause, but there does have to be an understanding of the financial position of the customers, too.

Whilst there are some outlier wealthy (or moderately-wealthy) individuals who choose to chazzer-shop for various reasons, a lot of us are shopping in the chazzer sector because our incomes effectively exclude us from much of the High Street. But going around nekkid isn't a viable option, either.

Why would someone of limited means want to pay as much, or more, for a used item of Primarche/ supermarket brand clothing than they could pay for the same thing brand new? What's their motivation? Where does that make any kind of sense? Yet this kind of over-pricing can be seen any day of the week in the pricier chazzers.

Most of the used clothing I see was pretty cheap when it was new, and 20% of the new price was the VAT, for adult-sized clothing. The used price needs to reflect the absence of the VAT and a depreciation for the wear and tear the item has experienced.

A lot of housewares can be purchased very cheaply new from the discount chains, meaning that the prices for used items of crockery, bedlinen, curtains, bric-a-brac have to undercut those. Unless they have some added-value like a fancy marque.

Most chain chazzers already cream off the best stuff for sale online/ in auctions/ via boutique versions of their main format shops.

tibawo

It is interesting to read about the charity shops, one near us regularly charges more for the second hand item than if it was brand new, noticed more on kids clothes than anything. I have found one near where I work, I was between lessons and browsing and the staff were lovely and there prices were realistic.

So gathering the stuff for eBay I put the description on and put photos to follow on Tuesday as light was bad and still a few things to put in the pile. Log in this morning to find a message asking about the photo. Love people who don't read the description!

mrs-moneypenny

Morning all
Belated birthday wishes greent.

Hope everyone is well and had a good weekend.
Going to try and get some kondoing done agin this week, I've got some papers to sort and a big bowl of pens that need sorting out. I donated the wicker basket they were in as a prop for the school play so they need thinking out before finding a new home.

GreyQueen

Thinking further on chazzer pricing.

Any business needs to understand its customers. Fail at that and you soon don't have a business at all.

We the Public also need to feel safe enough to donate our excess or unwanted items. And, by safe, I mean economically-secure enough that we will be able to buy more-favoured versions of the same items, at prices we can afford. For a lot of us, that means charity-shopping.

After all, being able to donate a garment because we're bored with it/ it's not the most flattering cut or colour is very much a First World concern. If we were very poor, and the only items available to replace it with were very expensive, we'd just use what we had until it was an utter rag. Which was the normal behaviour until mass manufacturered clothing, even in this country.

Karmacat

Chazzers price themselves out of their market sometimes. We had a YMCA furniture chazzer shop open, and it was basically old fashioned furniture, which makes sense - dark, wooden, too ornate for modern taste, odd shapes for today's homes. It was exactly the same price as the shop down the road that had been here for donkey's years that sold remaindered stock and *appealing* second hand furniture - pine, oak, metal bedframes. The chazzer has gone, the 2nd hand shop is still there and doing a booming trade thank heavens. It charges less for delivery than the YMCA shop, too - all in all, they *definitely* didn't understand their market.

I'm still kondo-ing books that I bought before there was an internet where you could read someone's website!

Lady_Bee

Interesting thoughts on the CS prices and glad to see I'm not overthinking it (too much anyway). The local hospice shop I'm thinking of sells their books for £1.50, now I think that's massively overpriced. They have a furniture shop across the road which is also pricey but then again they must sell at that price so can charge that. They do however also have a furniture/general shop in a local town that sells stuff at really cheap prices, for example a pretty decent armchair for £10, shoes and boots at £4 and nick nacks for 50p. I don't tend to buy from CS's but I have a work colleague who loves rummaging in them and she says about how expensive some of them are, I agree that in the race for making a decent profit they forget their market and can sometimes be charging almost new prices. I'm hoping a friend of mine will take some of the more decent stuff off my hands, those are the things I'm fussing over as a few things haven't even been worn.

Thanks for the undies tips, I'll get my scissors out later

VJsmum

Small thing, major step - OH Typed up a diary from s trip to India in 1986, and then - wait for it - BINNED THE DIARY :T:eek: this is major stuff

My Mother's Day pressies were a dvd that I will enjoy (I hope she won't mind me donating it after watching) and a new cover for my iPad cos the old one was rathe minging.

I did ask for some bird nuts but I am not ungrateful with what was received.

I need to do a chazzer run this week with large woollies casserole, some watched DVDs and some jumpers that haven't been worn all winter.

I need to sort my next project 333 clothes this week too. Heavy winter things put away and a couple of lighter warmer weather things to come out.