I don’t know who said “the best things in life are free,” but if your “best things” are stylish fashion pieces, this statement does not usually apply. Fashion does come at a price, but it doesn’t have to break your budget or consume your Christmas spending allowance. This season, more and more students are turning to a trend that’s enhancing their wardrobes and stretching their dollar – thrift store shopping.

Here are a few tips for the thrift store journey on which you’re about to embark.

Tip #1 – Be open-minded. Release yourself from your preconceived notions about thrift store shopping. Allow yourself to take in the smell of used clothes. It’s not the fragrance after the rain, but that smell can mean money saved. Don’t judge a store by its end caps. What you first see isn’t always what you get. You will have to search a little harder, but if you happen upon a great find, it makes all the hard work well worth it.

Tip #2 – Take your time. Everything won’t be neatly arranged in thrift stores like it will at the mall. This is a drawback, I’ll admit.

It won’t always be the instant gratification that you get when you walk into a department store. Allow yourself a couple of hours in one store or, if you can, devote an entire afternoon to thrift-store-hopping (the act of visiting several thrift stores in a limited period of time. Yes, it is an invented term).

Tip #3 – You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you’ll get something that fits you like a dream.

This is the golden rule of thrift store shopping. It’s no different from walking into Wal-Mart to get a carton of milk and walking out with a shopping cart full of everything you need in life – minus the carton of milk, of course.

When you walk into a thrift store expecting to find one specific thing, you almost set yourself up for disappointment. So open yourself up to the thrill.

Search the section that has what you came for, but look in all the other sections that might have the items you can’t leave without.

I’ll be honest with you. Thrift stores don’t usually have the same swank of department stores – or the same smell for that matter – but once you get past the “just-walked-into-an-old-attic” stench, there are treasures to be discovered.

Author