One I bought today at a charity shop.
One of our holiday treats the boys insist on doing, is lingering in one of our favourite towns - Hebden Bridge. It is only 11 miles away from us, but the road is a lonely windswept moor crossing littered with sheep and isolated farmsteads - and we love it.
The road - in places no wider than one car - clings to the side of the hills like a thin grey ribbon. During the summer months, the fields are dotted with white flecks, sheep, but during winter the sheep seem to look cream, brown and even pink against the brilliance of the snow.
Any hoo - at the beginning of the half term break, the boys sat together and wrote me a list of things that they wanted to do. So, whilst it was threatening to start snowing again, we set off for a day in Hebden Bridge.
We love trawling the charity shops. When we returned from Africa to live in the UK, we had literally only two pennies to rub together and our belongings were not due to arrive for some months. I learnt to frequent and love rummaging in these shops. The boys, are they grew up, discovered that toys could be bought for a few pennies and as they got older they found books and DVDs within their pocket money reach.
Sadly, the present economical environment and the increased savvy of the charities have together pushed up prices from these goodwill shops almost equal to the high street. I used to buy adult clothing to repurpose, but now I hesitate buying a second hand shirt with a button missing for just a little less than buying a new one.
Has any one else noticed this price increase? When we were on holiday up in the Orkney, we got chatting to a lady volunteer in one of their local charity shops and I commented to her how cheap their prices were.
Her response?
'Well - we have not paid for them, we were given them for free so why charge a lot? Every penny we make here is for charity....it you charge too much, people won't buy'
Why can't other charities see that too? Surely they have noticed that there is a shortage of cash going around and that their sales must have gone down?
This little heart, however, was very cheap - Why? I suspect it is foreign made, with cheap labour, transported in without necessarily benefiting the labour force who were employed to make them in the first place.
Yes, it's the same here in the US...or at least where I live. I was looking for some faux fur to do a little chair cover. The fabric runs about $20 a yard and I didn't even need a yard. I though if I could find a little coat, it would be cheaper. I found one at the Good Will without a price. I asked how much it was and was told it was $40...I was shocked. I told her that the prices were getting totally out of hand when you could buy a new one cheaper than a used one. She just looked at me.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I can find new items on sale for $2 a shirt or so and that's cheaper than what a yard of fabric would cost.
I still love the garage sales the best! People are usually trying to get rid of excess items, so they have them priced to go -- USUALLY -- I've seen garage sales priced pretty high too.
yeh charity shops have become too expensive - I used to volunteer at oxfam and found the nice old ladies who worked there often had no clue.. that say a second hand cheap t shirt has to go for less than a new one. we had a rule book to price things by, and had to stick to it - oxfam have established they make more money this way.. but it means lots of clothes get binned when they are not sold.. and i dont think that is what the people who gave them had in mind...
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