Thrifting Madness Part 2

Here we go moms and dads! Thrifting for the adults. The trick is, ladies and gentlemen, to think outside the box. Now days as dresses get shorter and shorter, shirts seem to be too! It's a nightmare finding good "in style" clothing that I like as a plus size lady.

A few tricks to make thrifting easy:

1. Visit all of the local thrift stores. Either make a day of it, or on your way home from an appointment and you have as few minutes free to go around and look. These are "no buy" days.
2. Make a mental note of the of the prices, some stores are my "last case scenario stores" because even though they're cheaper than the department stores, still paying $15-$25 for a dress or a 2pc outfit, is too much for me if I think I can find them for cheaper.
3. Make a note to the up keep of the store, stores that are clean and well organized tend to go through the clothes and items more thoroughly.
4. Keep in mind some thrift stores are better for nick-nack items like picture frames and wall art, while some you can find really good china sets or really good quality of name brand clothes.

Both of our outfits are from thrift stores. His happens to be Salvation Army and mine from our local goodwill. The dress was $4 and the pants too. I use the dress as a shirt or if I am hitting up the beach it makes a great over top of the bathing suit outfit.

Another trick that works even if your not thirfting is to buy items that can work with multiple outfits.

The pants in this out fit are the same ones I use with the dress from the above picture. They cost me $4 and I use them for multiple outfits. Same with the sandals. A goodwill clearance bin item $1.

Keep in mind you can get very formal business cloths from thrifting too, just ( as in my case) you may have to either hem some pants yourself or take them to a tailor and get them tailored, which can still be vastly cheaper than buying them new from some store in the mall or such.

Such as in the picture above. Very good office outfit, though I wear heals with the pants, it took me a while to hem them since I wanted to learn how to do it myself. The pants cost me $3.50 from goodwill.

Same with men. His pants comes from Salvation Army, which in my area runs a bit more pricy, about $7.99 per a pair of pants, but they have specials likes Wednesday half off clothing and more sales, that happen weekly or such. His shirt was $4.00 from our local goodwill which almost everything is $4 or less there. My outfit was actually free which is the next thirfting advice.

Ladies we ALL have closets full of clothes! Clothes we intended to wear once we "lost" the weight, or the "because my weight changes" clothes. We all have the "I meant to wear it more than once" outfits, and the "what in the world were they thinking when they bought me this." outfits. We have shoes that use to fit our feet but two or so kids later we wonder if our feet were ever that small. And then we all have the outfits that are just "no longer our style".  And what should we do? Donate these to goodwill, well yes you can do that. However think about swapping. A family friend was packing to move and she was down sizing her living space. Being the clothes fanatic she is she had so much clothing. We donated 7 big black trash bags!!! And that was after I ran away with 3! In return for helping her move, I got first pick out of all the clothes and shoes and accessories she was getting rid of. And since she never threw anything out her closet held size 2 to size 22. It really worked out. She go help packing and moving stuff into storage, and I got a shopping spree that would have cost me $200+ in goodwill.


So remember:

• Buy items that can be used with multiple outfits, and try to keep the style flexible, that way you can dress it down or dress it up.
• Look for clearance or sales even at thrift stores, they'll stretch that dollar twice as far.
• Don't think thrifting is just for jeans and tee-shirts. Remember you can buy business clothes for both men and women that are name brand, good quality and for nearly 4 times less. And spending a couple of dollars on tailoring makes them look like you paid big $$$ for the items.
• Ladies team up with your friends, swap clothes or make trades. This also works with things like childcare, cleaning, and hair. Everyone now days is trying to pinch that penny. 
• You can trade services, if you have a friend who can do hair, and she needs a babysitter because her salon has her working till 9pm on certain nights. Have her do your hair and put a "price" on the service and trade a service you can do such as helping her with childcare for equal trade "price".