Weekend Junk Finds: Christmas in July

I haven't been doing much thrifting this summer, which is sad because it's prime garage sale season. Things just haven't lined up right to do it and truthfully, I just haven't had the desire. I did read last weekend that the local Goodwill Outlet stores were doing a Christmas in July promotion and offering 10% off any Christmas goodies you manage to dig intact out of the bins. Well, the prospect of finding even a little bit of my beloved vintage Christmas was enough to make me willing to drag my kids all the way to two different Goodwill Outlets--twice in one week, even!

I only had any luck on the first trip, making the other ones a total waste of time and gas money but this was enough to make me happy! I tried to show Maren what I was looking for and she worked hard to find me more vintage ornaments. She's still learning how to tell the difference between the new and old, but I'll turn that girl into a vintage Christmas spotter yet! She was excited to help me shop. Both kids were really well-behaved and I had no problem rewarding them with some books from the bins--at 30¢ each, that was a bribe I could handle!

The Goodwill Outlet is tricky--they roll out the huge bins and leave them on the floor for some predetermined amount of time. Then throughout the day, they take rows of bins to the back and bring out new ones. The 'inventory' is rotating but not quick enough for me. Only a small fraction of the bins on the floor even had Christmas stuff in them, so waiting around and hoping those would be replaced was just not going to happen. I'm lucky to have even found these goodies!

In other junk news, my favorite local thrift store is making major changes and I really hate it. :( It was a small chain that was apparently bought by Savers/Value Village sometime in the last year. The last time I visited a few weeks ago, I noticed that they had changed the pricing structure and brought in new tags that look like the ones they use at Savers.

When I stopped in the other day, I found the entire store had been rearranged and reorganized. This thrift is housed in a former grocery store space so it is HUGE but for some reason they squished all of the clothing racks together. Now you literally cannot pass two carts down an aisle. Heck, even if you don't have a cart yourself, if somebody is standing there in the aisle with their cart, you have to ask to squeeze by them and run into the clothes on the racks to do so. For all the bric-a-brac stuff, they went from having 4 rows of shelves with LONG, wide aisles to turning the shelves perpendicular and creating about 20 short rows with narrow aisles. It's a total pain in the bum and will be even worse if you're trying to use a cart. It's all just so squished together and I can't figure out why because there is a ton of empty, wasted space all over the store now, except for where the actual merchandise is.

That thrift was my favorite--it was also the closest to my house, the cleanest, and had the most selection because it was so large. I'm so disappointed in the changes they made because they most certainly weren't improvements! I almost never go to the local Savers anymore because the prices are high and the selection is poor, and I'm bummed that my favorite store looks to be headed that direction if the Savers corporate offices have anything to do with it. :(