Cheap adversaries
We’re having a tribe rummage sale soon, and it’s long overdue. We’ll all be attempting to foist off what we no longer have room for on people who still have some space or, ideally, an actual need for it. It’s time to purge.
Yesterday I took two pickup trucks full of stuff to my sister’s to store until the big day. There were about 20 boxes of boys’ clothes plus all my baby hardware and some old bikes. I’ve decided not to sell any of my own clothes. Going through them, I remember on some level that I was in love with most of the items now gathering must in my attic when I bought them, but time has not been kind to the majority, which were “fabulous deals” or on clearance at Target. Buttons have fallen off, zippers ripped (and not because my pants were tight!) and cloth has faded unevenly. I have a metric crap ton of cute t-shirts that are either too snug under the arms, too loose in the body, too short at the bottom or all of the above. And I’m not even attempting to sell my cheap bookshelves, computer desk and other remnants of modular storage desperately needed on the day they were purchased. Most barely made it through the move into my house and are reinforced with L-brackets, extra screws and wood glue. They’re going straight to the curb. You get what you pay for, I guess.
I’m going to have to replace my desk and bookcases right away, but I’m not running off to a discount store for an instant fix. Nope, this time I’m doing it the new-fangled way: I’m buying used. I’ll start with Craigslist and local eBay listings, trolling other people’s rummage sales on the weekends to satisfy my craving for a tactile shopping experience. My goal is to spend $200 on a desk, chair, area rug and several sets of shelves, all of either reasonable quality or unbeatable price. And I know I can do it, too, with a little patience. By August, the proceeds from my own rummage sale will fund my new junk and I’ll never have to set foot in a Kmart to make it happen.
Localized online selling and the catapulting popularity of thrift shopping and swapping have created new options for people weary of a disposable culture, where 30-plus years of discount retailers flooding the market with cheap goods have created the expectation that we not only don’t have to pay much for what we own, but that there’s no need to care for it because it won’t last anyway. We’ll pay X number of dollars to solve Y problem quickly (a new desk for the office, new towels for the kitchen, new outfit for the weekend), then dump it when something else shiny catches our eye. The scenario begs the question: why buy new cheap when you can buy the same cheap or better even cheaper used?
It’s my theory that this is pissing off the very business interests who created the situation in the first place. How can they compete against a market they can’t assess? Don’t you imagine they get steamed every time a couple drives down the street in a pickup truck loaded with someone else’s gently used items? I wonder if it’s in retaliation that they’re making things even more cheaply than before, daring us to try to make a $13 shirt last more than one season, to actually move a $75 desk to another home – or even another room – without it falling apart. Sure, I know this completely overlooks the realities of the modern global marketplace and the tightly metric-driven retail industry, but I like to imagine a bunch of squinchy-eyed old codgers and slick young gunners sitting in a board room shaking their fists at the loss of revenue, however negligible it might actually be. It makes me smile every time I hand over a 5-spot for a hand-embroidered tablecloth to a nice elderly lady sitting in a folding chair with a Tupperware bowl full of change.
Remember when people passed on and inherited heirlooms? What’s your legacy – your Ikea bed frame, your Pier 1 dishes, your Caché prom dress? I’ve got the cedar chest my great-grandfather made and my great-grandmother’s Poppytrail rooster dishes, and that’s what I’ll probably give to my kids. There’s no way my HEMNES will make the move to my assisted living apartment, let alone a third destination. But it was a great deal; I got it for $75 at my neighbor’s rummage sale, saving me not only $204, but a drive to Illinois. He even threw in a bottle of wood glue for free.
Peace,
Jon Anne
