Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Thrifting Excesses - a False Economy?

I was over at Frugal By Choices log this morning and one concept she was discussing concerned ¨Cheap Chic¨ Thrifting, garage saleing and uptaking from friends. (They offload, you uptake)

For me, I am a very enthusiastic thift/opshopper. I love the thrill of the hunt, finding a high end label piece of even finding things I never knew I was looking for. Does that make it a bargain? Not always. Even op shopping can be a false economy. I have 12 brown t-shirts. Granted I wear them all, but who needs 12 of them? I could get by with 2 or 3. Even though they are all thrifted t-shirts, were they still value for money? Pink t-shirts....many. Black t-shirts? Don´t ask. Too many to count.

Another weakness is black pants. I have almost 20 pairs. Again, alot of that little amount of money could have been spent on something else, committed to debt reduction or further financial investment.

Don´t get me started on how many pairs of jeans I own. I live, eat and breathe denim and my wardrobe shows it. I could quite possibly NEVER buy another pairs of jeans in this lifetime and still be denim clad in my coffin at the age of 90.

Shoes? Another weakness.

Just because something is cheap, does not always make it a bargain. I thrifted a pair of Wrangler jeans a few weeks back, AND I HAVE NOT EVEN WORN THEM YET. I haven´t needed to. I have so many other pairs. The $2.50 is not alot of money in the scheme of things, but start multiplying that and the numbers start stacking up.

I shudder to think how much I would have spent on clothing had I purchased at full retail price. Should I also be shuddering at how much I could have saved on my extensive thrifted wardrobe?

6 comments:

  1. Oh now this is a really good question, and one that I ask myself quite often. For me it's dresses. I have A LOT of op shop dresses. And like you, I do wear them all, but how many dresses do I really need?

    Something that I do think of though, is that you aren't yearning for things you can't have. I can rarely afford to buy a pretty new quality dress, and I would be sad if they were out of my reach. At least with op shops I feel like I don't want for anything.

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  2. ...I don´t feel that I am missing out either. Only hubby misses out on wardrobe space!

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  3. I buy in bulk as well if I find something I like I usually get more than one. I guess we all like a bargain and most of my boys clothes are hand me downs and if they are stll in good order I hand them down to my friends little boy.

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  4. Hey Daffodil! For me it's not shoes...or even clothes...but magazines I'm a sucker for them! Got them everywhere. I'm spending loads of $$ on them and killing trees in the process...but they are an addiction I can't get over!

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  5. My hubby has a bad habit of collecting anything wood from Op shops. Granted he does amazing art work on them BUT we have so much wood, it filled our whole lounge room when we got it all out. OH DEAR!!
    However, i love op shops and i think i buy too much and spend money on things that i don't really NEED.

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  6. Hi Daffodil - yes we are guilty of same here. I guess the upside is that you don't feel too guilty when you do decided to move them on. Still chuckling (weird sense of humour I know) of your denim clad coffin attire.

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