Trift


If shopping brought pleasure. If it seemed remotely fun to walk from store to store rummaging through racks, hunting styles and sizes and colors and matches, and flipping over tags hunting for a deal, then  perhaps our wardrobes wouldn't be such a mismatched collection. But they are. 

I admire the lot of you that has an eye for color and shape and style and seasonal ins and outs. I've been dressed by my sisters for quite some time and when George had his interviews last year, I summoned a friend to walk beside me through the great trial and tribulation of finding a good tie and slacks and a shirt and belt and socks. He needed all of it. Grad school sort of purged us of anything fancy.

On top of a short attention span, and loathe for malls and shopping, my soul doesn't jive with the clothing industry. Cheap fabrics, the working conditions of those creating the clothes, the horrible destruction of land for cotton harvests, and the overpriced white t-shirts hanging here and there and everywhere, and, do I even mention, the piles of clothes I've got that so many don't. 

I've worked on it here and there and figured out ways to recreate clothes (pants to shorts and a dress into a shirt), make them (not a good direction to go at this point) and find someone to sew for me (once again, difficult). 

At this point, the most productive solution seems to be to shop at thrift stores. It seems economical, responsible, and helpful to the organizations selling the clothes.  




The biggest problem is that I don't know what is in style, I don't have a good "shopping with kids" strategy (I'm open to suggestions) and if I do have a sitter or George is with the kids, the last thing I want to do is shop.

It was a Thursday afternoon. I dug in deep. George had the kids. I bolted straight to Goodwill, zipped directly to the clothing section and started hunting. I decided to only hunt sundresses on this trip.

Within 30 minutes, I had a substantial pile of sundresses. Within 40, I had 6 dresses in a bag all for $60. Within an hour, I was home.

Tallahassee is in Florida -- land of the sundress. I would describe this Goodwill as rather fancy. Some ladies in our community dress quite nicely and share their clothes with Goodwill when they are finished. This makes it easy.

What if it wasn't easy? What would the solution be? Can I sew my own? Would I run to Old Navy if it was closer? Would I resort to online shopping and figure out a plan? Is there a fair way to do this?

Lots of questions and not a lot of answers. I have to admit that I'm not actively hunting all of them right now, but it sure was fun to aquire six sundresses for $60 in 60 minutes.

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