Our 5 Best Secrets for Secondhand Shopping Like a Frugal Warrior

Gather ’round, ye children, and I will teach you of an essential moment in Millennial cultural history.

The year was 2012 and a white boy with an egregious undercut was topping the charts rapping about your granddad’s clothes. Not only was this chart-topping song a banger (in fact, it slapped). And not only was the music video a cultural zeitgeist that would define a generation’s visual aesthetic. But the whole moment of “Thrift Shop” was a lovingly earnest ode to what we, the post-Great Recession generation, valued.

It was tacky. It was fun. It was simultaneously both anti-consumerism and materialistic. It was juvenile and absurd and it loved a goddamn deal. Did I mention that it slapped?

Anyway that’s how I remember it and I will not be accepting alternate historical interpretations at this time!

The point is that I am still living inside of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” And that makes me kind of an expert on secondhand shopping.

This expertise is more valuable now than ever! It’s been ages since we first wrote about how almost anything can be purchased secondhand. Since then we’ve covered how a lot of secondhand shopping is experiencing a nauseating price hike.

But there is cheap treasure yet to be found if you know where to look. It just requires a little extra time, wisdom, and elbow grease. Here are our five best secrets to secondhand shopping like you want to make an elder Millennial proud.

#1: Banish your snobbery

I don’t know who invented the concept of luxury consignment shops… but I both love and hate them.

I’m not talking your Goodwills or your ARCs. I’m talking about the little boutique with the cutesy name like Third Time’s the Charm or Clotheshorse or Second Love or What Goes Around Comes Around (two of these are real and two I probably made up). Instead of accepting donations, these shops operate on a consignment model, sourcing their goods from folks who want to make money upcycling their old looks and splitting the profits.

I love these thrift stores because they give you that boutique atmosphere—the feeling that you’re shopping a carefully curated collection of goods lovingly overseen by a quirky shop owner and her even quirkier octogenarian of a mother. You can find rare designer brands and high quality goods with ease. And you can do it all within the trendy comfort of a converted brownstone!

But I also hate these consignment shops because one was the scene of my greatest shame as an auntie.

“Used” does not mean “cheap”

My teenage nibling loves secondhand shopping, so I took them to one such boutique for an afternoon of thrifting. After looking around with excitement, their face quickly fell. “It’s all too expensive,” they said.

Sigh. Yeah.

I quickly realized my error. The careful curation and neat atmosphere of the shop was coming at a pricing premium. It was a for-profit business, and its high-quality, gently-used inventory was priced accordingly. My nibling wanted cool, quirky finds… but they also had the budget of an unemployed middle-schooler.

So off to Goodwill we went, where the goods were abundant and the prices rock bottom! My place as the favorite auntie was salvaged and we both went home with some sick (and inexpensive) finds.

Nonprofits like Goodwill and ARC will take just about anything donated. They aren’t picky with their inventory, and as a result, they can keep costs low and pass on the savings to their customers. Sure, the fluorescent lights and untidy racks lack a certain je ne sais quois… but this Vera Wang top cost me $6, so consider my snobbery officially banished!

Now I usually walk right by the consignment boutiques and do my secondhand shopping at Goodwill on the reg. And I like it.

#2: Know your brands and sizes

Quality varies wildly between brands. We went over this when we talked about the perils of fast fashion: subpar materials, slapdash designs, and rushed manufacturing all make an item less likely to survive its first owner, let alone a second.

This is why I thoroughly research brands before secondhand shopping. Test it out in the manufacturer’s store! Feel and see its quality with your own hands. Read reviews and ask friends about their experiences.

From there you can memorize a list of brands you trust and ignore the rest at the thrift store. Pop them tags, honey! Ignore the legions of Universal Threads from Target and zero right in on them Levi’s.

Get the sizing right

Most (all?) thrift stores no longer have fitting rooms. At least not in major cities like mine. I won’t speculate on the sort of incidents that caused them to close their fitting rooms. But it does present shoppers with a conundrum when it comes to sizing.

Especially since it seems to be an ineffable law of the universe that there shall be no consistency in sizes between clothing brands for us ladyfolk.

So while you’re out there researching decent, high-quality, long-lasting brands, try them on for size too. Just as you memorize your favorite brands, you should memorize your proper sizes in those brands.

Last time I needed new jeans, I rounded up every pair of size 28 Madewells I could find in my local thrift store. From there it was just a matter of picking the color and style that would make this junk in my trunk look less like junk and more like a ripe Georgia peach!

#3: Learn to repair used goods

Learning the most basic repair skills will open up a whole world of used goods to you.

Wait! Come back! I’m not suggesting you convert your bedroom into a Pinterest-worthy crafting workshop fit to rival that of Santa’s elves. That’s hardly necessary if you’re just trying to save money secondhand shopping.

You’d be shocked—shocked, I say!—at how many people donate clothes to thrift stores simply for lack of basic button-sewing skills. There are people who would rather cart an entire piece of furniture to the donation bin because it’s “wobbly” than bother tightening the screws.

Here’s my secondhand shopping repair kit:

• Tide Pen and OxiClean spray bottle for removing stains and marks on clothing
• small sewing kit for minor clothing repairs
• full set of Allen wrenches
• one small flathead screwdriver
• one small crosstip screwdriver
• a rag and some white vinegar

With these weapons in my arsenal, I can sew on buttons, repair seams, tighten wobbly furniture legs, and wipe clean almost anything worth buying from the thrift store. And it costs me the princely sum of whole minutes of my time.

#4: Understand that materials matter

Just as not all brands are created equal, the same goes for materials.

Learn the difference between hardwood (an actual, complete piece of wood made from an actual fucking tree) and particle board (an actual, complete piece of shit made from sawdust and wishful thinking). The former is sturdy and composes furniture with a long and useful life. The latter is ephemeral, composes the furniture equivalent of fast fashion, and crumbles into dust after being moved between roughly 2-3 average college dorm rooms.

Likewise there is a huge quality difference between real leather (a long-lasting, renewable resource notably unpopular among vegans) and pleather (a shitty simulacrum that flakes apart at the barest whisper of adversity and is literally made from fossil fuels). I won’t even touch pleather in a firsthand store, let alone a secondhand store.

This does not contradict my advice about banishing snobbery! It’s not snobbery to prefer your shit doesn’t fall apart. And it’s certainly not snobbery to buy items that last. If anything, it’s the definition of cheap!

Learn to recognize metal vs. plastic, hardwood vs. particle board, glass vs. plexiglass, wool vs. nylon, and leather vs. pleather. They might be priced the same at the thrift store, but one is going to last a whole lot longer than the other.

Read more of our essential advice on secondhand shopping in these lovingly crafted articles:

• Almost Everything Can Be Purchased Secondhand
• It’s Not Your Imagination—Secondhand Stuff IS More Expensive Than Ever
• I Am a Craigslist Samurai and so Can You: How to Sell Used Stuff Online
• 21 Ideas for Sustainable Swaps That Aren’t Shitty, Expensive, Greenwashed Garbage
• Ethical Consumption: How to Pollute the Planet and Exploit Labor Slightly Less

#5: Never buy what you can borrow

The last lesson that this secondhand shopping savant has to impart is this: Never buy things first or even secondhand that you can borrow from the library.

This means books, DVDs, and other physical media, as well as digital content like audiobooks, ebooks, and music. All of them are available for free at your local library or even the library’s website.

Actually, did I say “free”? Because I meant “for the cost of your state and local taxes.” You are literally already paying for the library with your tax dollars. It would be foolish not to take advantage of what you’re already paying for!

So don’t bother secondhand shopping for what you’ve already bought at the library. If we teach you nothing else about frugality here at Bitches Get Riches, let it be that your library card is the most valuable card in your wallet.

And if you ever forget any of these essential secrets to secondhand shopping like a frugal warrior… don’t worry about it! After all:

What are your secrets to successfully secondhand shopping? Do you have a favorite thrift store or consignment shop? Share with the whole class in a comment below! Teach us some stuff!

Also that R. Kelly line really aged… well? Poorly? That’s more than I want to be thinking about R. Kelly.