Blessed are the Thrifty

I know how to pinch a penny. I've been thrifty long enough, I recall the ridicule in middle school because of it.

The Tightwad Gazette. I can't
recommend it highly enough.

Several years ago, my brother's mother-in-law recommended The Tightwad Gazette to me, but, figuring I could've written the book myself, I brushed it off. There's something about hearing a suggestion twice. When my sister, working mightily to save for an adoption, read The Tightwad Gazette and insisted I do likewise, I devoured all three volumes in a few blissful days of non-stop reading. While others might scoff at the offbeat money-saving techniques, I took notes. With The Tightwad Gazette author Amy Dacyczyn encouraging readers to shop secondhand, I bought a needed pair of sweatpants in practically my first trip to a thrift store since childhood.

Yet I didn't eschew the Kohl's clearance racks entirely; my nascent secondhand sensibilities hadn't fully taken hold, and it still seemed superior to purchase new when steep discounts beckoned. But I experienced buyer's remorse frequently. I found a cute knit dress, which pilled and shrunk, unpresentable after its first spin in the Maytag. My husband bought a seemingly indestructible metal garden trowel, but the tip broke off. Our must-have cookware gradually lost its nonstick coating, which I assume we ingested. Most new items promised more than they delivered.

But the more I scoured the secondhand market, the more I appreciated the quality difference between new and used. With Goodwill's shelves teeming with vintage merchandise, I learned I could avoid new item failures. The phrase, "It's brand new!" started to irk me.

I love quality vintage cookware.

Used items have undergone rigorous quality testing. If the clothing will pill or shrink, it already has. If the trowel has dug decades of holes, it's unlikely to break no matter how hard-packed the soil. If Zia Francesca made her famous pasta sauce in the pot ever since her wedding day back in 1946, likely I can put it through a few more decades of home cooking, then bequeath it to my dear ones, along with the family recipes. 

Certainly, some items of yesteryear lacked quality, too, but they're already landfilled. Even if a used selection doesn't serve me long, I find solace in its life with the original owner and its comparatively low price. Unlike new goods with "no user-serviceable parts," it's likely to be repairable. When a new item bites the dust, I'm left with not only a fuller trash can, but the improvident feeling of pure, unadulterated waste--money and resources squandered in equal measure.

I'm glad some people appreciate quality vintage items,
or my shop, Laura's Last Ditch, would be out of business.

Dollars spent at a garage sale, thrift store, or estate sale stay in the local economy and compense the item only, not additional resources used to create and transport it. Buying used online supports a small business owner such as I, or assists in another's decluttering. But, purchase at a typical store, and money goes overseas, enriches a CEO (not that I begrudge the CEO, but still...), and may contribute to forced child labor or degradation of God's beautiful creation.

Buy used, and I see and feel the item, unimpeded by packaging, allowing me to detect how it has held up under normal conditions. I've prevented mounds of waste, and cut the time spent nagging my son to take out the trash. Plus, I adore the amusing unpredictability of thrift stores.

You know packaging is bad when they
sell a tool just to open it. Instead of buying
Open It!, I vote to avoid packaging altogether.

With myriad reasons to purchase secondhand, it's no wonder "It's brand new!" rubs me wrong. I don't use the phrase, lest I give the impression I consider new items superior. Children hear this and learn, if it's not new, they've received less than the best, when the opposite may be true. Really, how much is a tag worth? How much for a curse-eliciting, impenetrable plastic package? Will the $2.99 clearance shirt from Target equal the $2.99 quality shirt from Salvation Army? Even when a store price equals the used price, it doesn't mean the new one deserves a spot in the cart. Instead of considering 'new' the standard of quality, 'tested' makes a worthier standard.

My new ad for Laura's Last Ditch,
celebrating vintage quality.

Do you shop secondhand, or do typical stores still tempt you? As a new year dawns, consider joining "The Compact," or simply commit to avoiding recreational shopping, choosing used instead.

While I pinch my pennies, I'm pinching myself: rather than cursing my things as they fail, I feel blessed to have quality at a reasonable price.

Those middle school friends who ridiculed my frugal ways had a point: thrift can be ridiculous. Ridiculously good.

Next: When my 83-year-old grandma receives her first computer as a surprise birthday gift, she's not the only one Wowed.

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Lower Expectations = Stress-Free Christmas

Think her mom ran all over town trying
to find the season's hot gift?

People think kids need presents for Christmas--and lots of them--hundreds of dollars' worth per child. Parents even let the kids dictate, to a certain extent, what they want, via a wish list. Many of these same kids are ferried around, allowed to dictate the dinner menu, and have parents who do almost all the housework. Parents are relegated to a serving role while kids are coddled. Is it any wonder, then, that Christmas is a financial and emotional drain? What if I can't find the hot toy on my kid's wish list? I'd rather run from store to store, or overpay on eBay than disappoint my little princess!

Does this come to your house? Cancel it.

But, we can teach our kids that it's not about me, me, me, and model it ourselves by not demanding the latest gadgets or fashions, a bigger house, or faster car. We can practice contentment, using our resources instead to take care of our own financial obligations and to care for the legitimate needs of others. And we can teach discernment with advertisements, such as, "Yes, that remote control helicopter with built-in video camera in the Toys R Us ad looks really fun, but it doesn't look well made, and it would probably break after it flew into a wall, and all we could do is throw it away, and that wouldn't be a good use of resources," or, just promptly recycle the ad. And point out that, "Yes, your friend Suzie has some really great American Girl dolls with all the fancy accoutrements, but     (list trade-offs here, such as day care, stress, less leisure time)         in order to work to pay for those fancy toys and a big house to fit them in."

Remember simple Christmases, by
buying this plate you don't need.

If we teach children right, we needn't worry they'll be deprived. It's loving, caring parents they need, not a bunch of fancily wrapped packages that become outgrown, broken landfill fodder, or clutter bound for U-Store-It. Remember  Little House on the Prairie, how the Ingalls girls delighted in oranges in their stockings?

Kids need to learn to care about others. I have a friend who lets her kids decide, in lieu of a bunch of presents, which non-profit organization to donate to each Christmas. Kids can have such big hearts when it's cultivated and modeled by the adults in their lives.

We get our son one or two gifts for Christmas, from a garage sale or thrift store. He remembers what they were. He enjoys them, more than a toy we might buy last-minute from the store, throwing something mildly appropriate into the cart amidst a throng of last-minute shoppers, just so he'll have a haul as big as his friends'. Raised this way, he does not expect a Christmas-morning windfall. A kid with other expectations will need to be told ahead of time that family priorities are changing--not because times are tight, necessarily, but because excess consumption doesn't really provide lasting satisfaction, and it does not fit with the family values.

But a parent who isn't stressed, who doesn't need to work overtime, and who teaches values that matter is the best gift of all.
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