Shop Charity Store in '24!

Rosa_Damascena

Miró said:

Did the rounds of the Bedale & Thirsk C/B’s and the Thirsk chazza shops today.  Spent the grand total of £1!

Roman embroidered jacket….tis a burgundy shade, not purple as it looks.  A woman at the Bedale C/B was selling off her extended family’s unwanted clothing….everything was £1.

Does her extended family know?  

The jacket looks to be good quality, would look good over a light coloured dress or teamed with dark jeans. For just £1 I would be making sure I used it!

My resolve against buying any more clothes lasted all of 5 seconds yesterday. I bough a Betty Jackson Black top in cream (a universal piece, again in the WM!) and these 2 dresses - Phase Eight and Damsel in a Dress (BNWT):


I noted that all 3 pieces were made in Romania, so at least working practices exist. I cannot claim that these workers are paid particularly well, only that they are not subject to the same ridiculous working hours and power imbalance as those in Asia.

I also bought a pair of jeans, a sequinned jacket to go over formal wear, a merino wool jumper, thick embroidered tee-shirt, some earrings and another 5 books! Total spend for the day £17 (vs intended spend of £0).

DigForVictory

Matty246 said:

It struck me the other day that charity shops don't sell things like tools and hardware. I wonder why? 

Oddly, some do, but you have to ask. This gives volunteers a chance to steer potentially dangerous edged things (and I include knitting needles as well as scissors, kitchen knives, gardening weaponry alongside hammers, chisels etc) into age appropriate hands
I'll not start on the challenge of knowing what the market will bear for a set of Marples swanneck chisels, as how do you expect the staff to be able to say confidently "if it's in that box, it's a fiver a tool" when about 2% of the population will identify a swanneck chisel from any other and those that can are usually not staffing charity shops. Plus there are tools with B&Q embossed into the handle & others with something lurking under the patina (or light rust) on the metal & you need time & chemistry to reveal what. Himself was formidable talented that way. Left the kit lovingly oiled & sensibly filed, just never got around to putting labels on things, so I have a phone of photos that I ask for help with. The Marples swanneck was Easy. The armourers & jewellers gear is being a real challenge. All this online pattern recognition code gets led astray by mislabelled ebay stuff!  

shandyclover

Last year I was visiting my Dad who has emigrated to Australia. He lives in quite a remote town, and was having a clear out. We took his extra DIY tools and paraphernalia to a 'Men's Shed' on the edge of town for their community workshop. I thought it was a brilliant idea, you could also borrow tools from them too, rather than having to buy for a one off job. I wish there were more in UK but in Australia they seemed to be everywhere. https://menssheds.org.uk/about-ukmsa/

Cherryfudge

There’s a men’s shed near where I live. There are also charities that restore tools to give to people in other countries to enable them to start a business. 

This morning I went to Roxburgh Thrift Shop and came out with a bundle of finds! They have some good donors 😊. The charity is raising money for a wheelchair-friendly bus.

I got a Seasalt dress, still with tags (59.95 originally, £8 to me) and three scarves for £1, one if which is pure wool and incredibly soft, more a wrap than a scarf. Another is polyester but a nice print and the third is a nice summery chambray.

We also got DVDs and a book on their 3 for £1 deal.

Brie

Meanwhile in Canada.....I was going to post a photo of one of the thrift shops my brother and I visited today but can't get the photo to load properly...odd.  

Anyhoo - 3 places visited each the size of  a small supermarket - the photo showed some of the 30+ cars parked in front of it and the all those people were in the shop and it looked not busy at all.  Best of the bunch was the 3rd we hit which had an astounding array of vinyl - I only managed to look through about 1/4 of what they had in the 20 minutes I was in that section.  Came away with 4 pristine condition items for the OH.  Nicola Gedda (double album), Jussi Bjorling (the Pearl Fishers duet!!!!) Vladimir Horowitz and the Dubliners in Concert.  All for $4 total.  That's about £3.  So I'm saying that's my mom's present to husband for Christmas.  Unless my mom (who can't shop so will be another brother buying) finds something more.  

Cherryfudge

Further shopping to confess to: there’s a chazza in Melrose called something like Heart chest and stroke which is very boutique-y but worth a look. I found two pairs of jeans the right length for me, (£7 and £5) and a storage jar for £2.50. The books were trendily arranged by colour which looks good but makes searching by author tricky. I feel I am very unlikely to buy a book because it’s yellow or blue but I’m quite likely to buy one on the strength of having liked another by the same person. However, it’s horses for courses and there will be people for whom it works.

Rosa_Damascena

Cherryfudge said:

Further shopping to confess to: there’s a chazza in Melrose called something like Heart chest and stroke which is very boutique-y but worth a look. I found two pairs of jeans the right length for me, (£7 and £5) and a storage jar for £2.50. The books were trendily arranged by colour which looks good but makes searching by author tricky. I feel I am very unlikely to buy a book because it’s yellow or blue but I’m quite likely to buy one on the strength of having liked another by the same person. However, it’s horses for courses and there will be people for whom it works.

As a connoisseur of the second-hand book I agree with you. The counter argument is that in most chazzers the selection is random and for me that is part of the delight, stumbling across the unexpected gem when least expected (yesterday for example I saw Proust cheek-by-jowl with Jeremy Clarkson ). The rainbow approach maintains that random subject schema but I guess might add to the overall aesthetic appeal of the shop as a whole, so may suit the merchandiser and customer alike.

Having vowed not to buy anything else after the tiresome exercise of "decluttering" but in fact weeding out very little, I bought a bodycon dress from Roman, a Per Una smart cardigan in pink and a Phase Eight fine knit beaded sweater. And the obligatory book (Graham Greene short stories).

Miró

Last chazza I went into on my tour of the local ones today and I picked up an unopened box of Salvatore Ferragamo ‘Signorina’ EDT 50ml in the St Gemma’s Hospices shop. I am always hesitant about getting smellies from chazza shops having had some that has deffo ‘gone off’ before. Anyhoo it was priced at only £3 so worth a whirl I thought.  So pleased I did as it is lovely, fresh and flowery.  Had a squiz on FleaBay and the cheapest I could find was £29  

Bit sad tho as another local chazza shop (RSPCA) is also closing down - selling everything off at £1 today. 😢

Brie

one of the "little" chazzers yesterday

Cherryfudge

Wow @Brie! I could get lost in there!