Discount Thrift Stores? That Almost Sounds Too Good to Be True!

94 cents plus tax

So where does a frugal woman go for shopping when she's on a super tight budget? How about a discount thrift shop? Yes, there is such a thing in my area. It's where surplus thrift store merchandise is sold at a steep discount.

I had been vaguely aware of the Goodwill outlet for a while, but I assumed it was too far or inconvenient to get to from my house. Then one of my daughters heard from a co-worker that we had one in the town to the north of us. Still thinking this was a bit far, I asked my daughter to google map it for me. It turns out that our local Goodwill outlet is even closer to our home than the regular Goodwill store.

Okay, so how does the Goodwill outlet work, you may wonder. The merchandise is primarily clothing, but they also have some small hard goods and a section full of furniture. Nothing is on racks or shelves, but it is all contained in huge, wheeled bins. Clothing is not sorted in any way, all sizes and genders mixed together. It is piled high, and you have to dig through the piles to search. There is no way a person could see it all. That may sound like a bad thing. However, it means that some "good stuff" will still be there, undiscovered. Just an example, in my own search, I came across two 100% cashmere sweaters in great condition and in my size after a bunch of people had plowed through that bin. As the bins get picked over, the employees wheel them out to the warehouse and replace them with freshly-stocked bins. There are no dressing rooms. However, they do provide a power strip for testing small electric appliances. It's a bit noisy and chaotic. However, I found the other shoppers to be very courteous.

When you've found what you want, you take it to the cash register and your items are weighed by category. There's a large white board at the registers that indicates the price per pound for the various categories of merchandise. Everything is sold by the pound; any tags are irrelevant, merely reminders of where items were previously for sale. Shoes were selling for $1.15 per pound yesterday. Clothing and linens were selling for $1.59 per pound. And small electronics were 59 cents per pound.

75 cents plus tax

So, what did we buy? I carried around a pile of clothing for a while. At the end, I sorted it all and tried on what I could. I had dressed in leggings and a slim-fitting long-sleeved knit shirt, so I could slip items on over my clothes. There were no mirrors, so my daughter used her phone to show me how I looked in the garments. (If you have a smartphone, do you do that? Use your phone as a mirror?) Anyway, after discarding about half of my pile, I settled on one dress for myself and three items for my husband. In between looking through the clothing bins, I checked out the hard goods. I came across a handheld mixer to replace our broken hand mixer. It was missing it's beaters, but it was still in working condition. I have found that for the most part, the beaters for American brand hand mixers are interchangeable from one brand to the next. I have 2 sets of beaters leftover from hand mixers that have died. And both sets fit this new-to-me mixer.

The old Goodwill price tag on the mixer said $5.99, but I paid 94 cents. The dress that I bought is a Calvin Klein. I found the exact same style listed on ebay for $29 as a previously-owned dress. I paid 75 cents for it. I have my summer dress, now, and it barely put a dent in our budget.

The prices were fantastic -- I can easily see us going back and searching the bins again. In fact, the next opportunity I get, I'm going back to find a white cardigan or jacket to throw over this dress.

Does Goodwill have an outlet in your city? To find out, check this Goodwill outlet locator page.  Happy thrifting!