Hello again! 👋
It's me.
Did you know that I still go to the thrift store to drop things off once or twice a month?
You might think (at least I know I do!) that after living in our tiny apartment for a year now we'd have downsized everything adequately and have no need to get rid of anything else.
Welp, I am here to tell you that that is not the case. We are blessed to receive lots of hand-me-downs and gifts but when something new comes into the house that usually means something else has to go to make room.
And while I did do a donation drop off today, I'm here tonight to let you know of three things I often bring to the thrift store that you might not have known before could be.
1. Plastic Bags.
Try as we may to bring cloth bags along when we go shopping and use less plastic bags, I find we always seem to acquire more and more of them. They're handy as garbage bags in our bathroom, but we don't fill that garbage can often enough to go through the mess of plastic bags we have in our cupboard.
My favourite little thrift store often asks for donations of clean plastic bags and they reuse them at their till for customer's purchases.
I'll typically wait until I have a bag full of bags and then drop it off on the donation table the next time I'm there. The first time I brought four shopping bags full of bags!
2. Egg Cartons
An odd one to think of, hey?
Again, my small local thrift store collects egg cartons and sets them out on their free shelf (oh yes, you're at the wrong thrift stores if yours doesn't have a free shelf) for homestead farmers to grab for their egg collecting.
I used to recycle our egg cartons through the city and then moved on to donating them directly to a poulterer in our neighbourhood, but lately he's been well stocked on egg cartons and I remembered that the thrift store takes them! A perfect solution for giving them another life before they hit the blue bin.
3. Stained and Ripped Clothing, Bed Sheets, and Towels.
Thrift stores get a decent amount of unsaleable clothing and other cloth items that people donate. Rather than throwing these things out, a lot of thrift stores have a textile recycling program in place.
To save their volunteers the hassle of sorting through my ripped or stained items I fill a bag or box up with the pieces and label it something along the lines of, "For Textile Recycling. All items unsaleable." It's also import to call ahead to make sure that your thrift store accepts items for textile recycling, otherwise they'll just chuck it and your good intentions add to their waste pickup fee.
If you can't find a thrift store nearby for this, there are lots of bottle depots or other sorts of recycling centers which also can take these items off your hands.
Finally, you could call an animal shelter in your area to donate to. Often they need towels and sheets to line animals crates with and the little guys don't mind if there's a pen mark on the sheet.
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