Posted on 05/11/2020 8:32:16 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
That may be true of Goodwill's CEO today, but the original was founded as a Methodist charity in 1902.
Those are the things that DQ it from even being donated in my book.
A church I attended did a clothing exchange once a year. You brought in what you didn't want and took what you wanted. No cost.
It was open only to church members for the first couple weeks, then the last week, they opened it up to the public.
The welfare rats would come and take bagsful of stuff and then resell it at garage sales, so the public didn't get it until it was well picked over.
Also, I remember one year a family, who was not known for being clean to begin with, brought in several trash bags full of clothes, that absolutely reeked of cat pee.
She said, yeah, the cats ripped open the bags and sprayed it, but here it is anyways.
She left and the church custodian told us he was giving the whole load of their stuff the heave ho.
I was never so disgusted about someone as that family. I agreed whole-hearedtly with the custodian.
I’ve gotten stuff from Land’s End and LL Bean and other name brands with the tags still on them.
If you’re thorough in looking, you can make some great finds.
This reminds me of my childhood when every piece of used clothing was used. Quilts were made and used by everyone. Rags for house, outdoors, equipment etc. Stuffing for pillows. Of course kid’s clothes were hand-me-down (to and from) siblings, cousins, neighbors, people at church etc.
I suppose this was before fashions changed as rapidly, at least for average blue collar or rural Americans. I still have a few treasured, carefully preserved quilts that contain fabric pieces from clothing worn by grandparents, parents and other identifiable family.
And I have 2 plastic tubs of quilt scraps of good pieces from clothing I particularly like. I always have some quilts in progress. I cut pieces till I get bored and put them away till the mood strikes again. My daughters always love it when one of them gets a new quilt. I no longer hand quilt, tho I did enjoy doing so with ladies in the family, sitting, visiting and working all afternoon around the big quilting frame.
The consumerism we are blessed with now does leave us with far too much to use ourselves. Our church used to send quite a bit down to Mexico until 10-15 years ago. Then the used clothing became unwanted across the border as well. In one manner it’s a blessing that it’s now difficult to find people in the world who do not need these items, but these needs have been replaced by other social problems which are worse in many ways.
Sorry I carried on so long. This just brought back good memories. I do still love creating beautiful new things from the old. These days I do more crochet than sewing (when not in the garden.) I do find beautiful garments made of lovely, expensive type, yarns at thrift stores, reclaim the yarn and crochet. Saved a lot of money over buying wools and silk yarns new. Maybe this whole shutdown thing has given a handful of younger folks new time to explore some old crafty things.
Fleece makes a pretty good sieve.
It does NOTHING to keep you warm unless it’s under something that is wind proof.
As an outer layer, it’s pretty useless.
My wife gets second hand clothing all the time, largely from shopgoodwill.com. She can tell the difference bewteen a $150 pair of shoes going for $15 and the garbage shoes that are new at the Wal-Mart for $15.
My best Goodwill success story... My daughter was a budding musician and when we would find instruments, we always bought them no matter what they were. If she didn’t learn to play them, she would still use them for decorations in her room. One day, walking through the Goodwill store, one of the employees cam out of the back with a cart and proceeded to unload things on the shelves. She put up a worn out pink violin case. Looked like it was a child’s grade school violin. I picked it right up and noticed a couple of “regulars” watching me to see if I put it back down.
I opened the case and the violin was a little rough. Intact but rough. I looked inside and I caught a glimpse of “Stradivarius”. Now, I know my fortune is not that good, but I put the violin back in the case and headed for the register. When I got home, I found that it was a copy of a Stradivarius made by a German craftsman (of some notoriety). Googling info, I saw this particular craftsman’s violins were fetching anywhere between $2500 to $4000.
So I called a local store that specialized in and restored classical instruments. I brought the violin down to the store and he said he would clean it up and fix whatever needed to be fixed for $500. He would put it on display in his store and when it sold, he would take his $500 out of that plus 10%. Three months later, he calls to let me know he just put a check in the mail to me. He sold it for $3500 and charged me 10% of the remaining $3000. So my $20 Goodwill violin netted me $2700.
“It keeps people employed.”
It keeps CHINESE, INDONESIAN, VIETNAMESE people employed.
Maybe the Poshmark ad. My niece make a lot of money selling on Poshmark. I give her my older clothes (retired, and no longer need my “good stuff”) that are in excellent condition so she can sell them.
understood!
our local groceries have raised a lot of their prices too, some of the old tags are still on the cheeses and tinned foods, ha, right next to the new higher prices.
the feds can’t print 6 TRILLION new dineros out of thin air in just a few weeks.....and expect prices to remain stable.
Jessie Milburn? or?
you will be a big attraction on Antiques Roadshow, ha!
good luck with it
smile smile
We have a whole ppe cottage industry that sprang up overnight. After this is over it would be great to enable access to the stuff going overseas that apparently, overseas no longer wants. We need to transition over to more domestic manufacturing and a place that often starts is in cottage industry. You can’t really turn a profit buying consumer craft supplies but you can turn a profit by turning one man’s trash into another man’s treasure. That’s always been the way, back to the toshers and the night soil men.
I do recall seeing a man wearing a “Tampa Bay Rays, 2008 World Champions” cap. I had to look at it twice to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. The Phillies won the World Series over Tampa that year.
My son likes the athletic wear stuff. We get those fancy-looking Under Armor branded shirts for $5 and Nike shorts for about the same. That stuff is easily $30-40 brand new.
80% hamburger in some kind of heat sealed “cube” packaging was all that was available for a week or two and it was 7.99 a pound.
Didn’t buy it...got some cheaper ground chicken instead.
2.99 a pound store ground hamburger is back, now, but there’s not a lot of it.
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