Thrifting 101: estate sales

Good morning everyone and welcome to my thrifting 101 series!  I am so excited to post the estate sale section because this is my favorite type of thrifting!  

1.     Be patient.  You have to understand that not all estate sales are good.  I have been to just as many bad estate sales as I have good.  

2.     The later in the week , the bigger the savings!  The owners or estate company will mark things 1/2 off usually on Sundays and sometimes Saturdays.  They don't want to end the sale with a house still full of things they wanted to get rid of!

3.     That brings me to the next rule- try to bargain!  Most people will take a lower price than marked- especially when there is tons of stuff that needs to go!

4.     Look everywhere!  If it is a true estate sale, every thing in the building should be in sale.  I found awesome vintage necklaces hidden in a shoe box.  If you see cedar chests, pop those suckers open!  One time I found furs and vintage dresses from the 1940s in one.  No one else thought to open it before me. Win!

5.     Bundle.  That means put everything you want to buy in a big pile and carry it to the cashier.  Making it look messy and heavy helps.  Why would you do this?  Because the cashier doesn't want to count and look through everything in your arms.  They will almost always just give you a total price for everything you grabbed.  I paid nine dollars for tons of clothes when the half off price was still thirty!

thrifting 101: thrift stores

Thrift stores can be super overwhelming, but you seriously can find incredible vintage clothes at amazing prices if you have patience.

1.     just like any other form of thrifting, you have to be patient and understand that you aren't usually going to find ten amazing things at once (And yes, you are more likely to run into something less than desireable that smells funny).  The first time my mom dragged me to Saver's I was an unknowing thirteen year old. I walked out and waited outside because the smell gave me a headache and all the old and used things looked gross.  Now I go whenever I can.

2.     Look in every section!  That means kids, pants, womens, mens, shoes, everything!  People pick things up and put them back in the wrong places.  The employees also may have put it in the wrong section.                                                                                                                                             

3.     Don't spend a lot of money on one thing!  It's a thrift store.  No one should spend $90 on a used dress (It wasn't even cute or expensive to begin with!)  If you are willing to spend that money on a dress, buy yourself a new one.  The point of thrifting was originally to save people money!  

4.     Not only should you look in every section, you should look in every size.  If it is vintage you're after, the size on the tag is different from sizing now. You are a bigger vintage size.  Also, if there are home sewn beauties they won't have a tag.  Employees guess the size.  And trust me, they don't actually care to be very accurate.

5.   Jeans- feel overwhelmed looking at this picture?  Me too.  Followers on this blog know I would choose wearing a vintage skirt or dress over jeans.  For as long as I have been into thrifting, the jeans section is something I have walked around completely.  I told myself not even to look into that isle because it was so much of one thing glaring me in the face.

My mom made me look for jeans.  I found green high waisted pants that weren't jeans at all in that section!  See again, rule 2.  I also have projects requiring vintage jeans.  So I actually, for the first time recently, looked through the entire jean section!  This is a personal victory.