The Dark Side of Thrifting: "We're begging you to STOP donating!"

Donating alleviates the guilt people feel for chucking it in the trash.

6:00 that bread box shouldn’t be $221 to begin with.

I've never understood why thrift stores would price things so high when they're supposedly overrun with inventory from overconsumption.

It’s disgusting for people not to clean/sanitize items before setting it out. 10-15 years ago, I had friends who were into thrifting, now when I checked it out, items suck more and are unreasonably priced.

That's what is nice about being a minimalist. I don't need new things and I don't need someone's used junk.

Resellers showed the thrift stores there was money to be made and they wanted to be the ones making the profit so they raised their prices

I wish I hadn't bought so much stuff. It's exhausting trying to get rid of all the crap. This overconsumption is so freaking stupid.

$40 for a bag of used Mega Bloks is diabolical. 😈

The breadbox should have been $5. It shouldn't matter what the original cost was. They got it for free. Get it in and get it out. The money should come from volume not greed. People need to stop donating filthy, broken items just to get rid of them.

I work in a large thrift store. 1. The reason you find items marked higher than their original pricing or broken/ripped items, is because each employee is expected to sort through about fifteen hundred pounds of donations every day and then price the sellable stuff. Of course we're going to miss a price tag. I do it myself. Usually, the supervisors do a 'rack check' to catch that stuff, but things get missed. If it's something you want, just tell an employee and they'll re-price it. We're not robots, and there's a time limit we have to adhere to, so some days, I'm lining things up on the table like an assembly line, punching in numbers, sticking on price tags and tossing it in the rack to be taken out to the floor. Not much time for individual inspection. 2. The reason pricing has gotten so high, is because of the amount of donations that are literal garbage. Out of the fifteen hundred pounds of merchandise, I get about 8-10 of those small Rubbermaid containers of sellable items. The rest is literal garbage. Half-eaten bags of food, lasagna-encrusted cookware, boxes of empty DVD cases, headless dolls, furniture with only three legs, lamps without cords, thoroughly used underwear, and on and on. Stuff that is obviously not re-sellable. And all that stuff has to be hauled away. We have three pallets, each with 4x4x4 foot boxes for toys, ceramics and metal garbage. We fill each one of those twice a day on average. That's forty pallets a month. Several tones of garbage/recycling. And we have to pay to have it taken away. This isn't even including the clothing they get in. That's not my department. 3. We don't get everything for free. In order to maintain stock in the larger stores, we're buying truckloads of stuff from other thrift stores or charities that have too-many donations. plus, it's a business. They pay rent, employees wages (such as they are), electricity, etc. etc. 4. The amount of people that think the clothes are washed before selling them is crazy. We would need an entirely different crew working 24/7 to wash all the stuff that goes out on the floor. When sorting clothes, we take a sniff, turn it around once, and if it looks alright, it goes out. Finally, we're minimum wage workers. I've been there for four years and have repeatedly been called "one of their best employees'. But I'm still at minimum wage. So unfortunately, I don't really give a shit what goes out on the floor. Also, I've heard people complaining that employees buy all the best stuff. Well, not really, we're not allowed to buy stuff until it's been on the sales floor for 24 hours. And we don't get a discount unless it's been on the floor for a week. Does that stop me from "hiding" stuff I want until I can buy it? Of course not. I'm making minimum wage sorting through YOUR garbage. I'll do whatever I can to get what I want. Even if it means YOU don't. There's got to be some benefit to working there, right? You all are gonna complain that a minimum wage worker got a deal after a day of sorting through soiled underpants? Give me a break.

I struggled through that last point when my husband and I started going to estate sales. To see someone's prized possessions, literally the entire content of their homes, being pawed through by strangers...it made me sad. Especially when someone clearly put time and money into building a collection that the heirs don't want, and many times, no one else wants. I stopped "collecting" after that. I try to own things that have a purpose, or if the purpose is merely decorative, curate those items to just a few pieces that bring me the most joy.

My math man (husband) says, "Are you adding up the hours and the gas prices to your 'looking for the perfect thrift store price'?" Time is money and gas is money. We thrifted a lot 25 years ago...but now the prices and trash sifting isn't worth it right now....

The Island of Misfit Toys is about to have its own planet.

Goodwill does suck! They're paying the CEO over $1 million for whatever his job is and then they're trying to sell us trash for $10 a shot. I have given up on that store altogether.

No I would not pay 35.00 at the thrift store for the bread box just because it’s 200.00 at target. Reason being is that 200.00 is absurd so seeing it for 35.00 at Goodwill is still absurd to me lol. When eggs were 10.00 a dozen for regular eggs then “sale” for 4.00 a dozen I still didn’t buy them. It’s manipulation.

I love how you never run out of things to say and content to make. Keep up the great content your supporters appreciate your effort

I was thrilled that my daughter's college placed big rolling bins on each floor of the dorms at the end of the school year. The young ladies could donate anything that they didn't want to haul back home or no longer needed. Lots of unused and gently used items like bedding, kitchenware, vacuum cleaners, clothing, etc. The items in the bins were donated to the local women's shelter. I wish every college did this.

As a former employee of another giant chain thrift store, i can attest to the ugly reality of our store getting hoarder dumps by the relatives or grown adult children of hoarders after the hoarder died. I have had garbage bags of "like new clothes" get donated with dead vermin feces and dead maggots and roaches. I've had to deal with bedding clearly soiled by human dna and diarrhea. I've had to contend with broken, dirty, moldy, damaged, spider infested furniture that spent decades never having seen the light of day from "storage units" garages, basements, attics and even barns and sheds. We,ve gotten books and media that were literally destroyed and unreadable due to water damage, mold, silverfish bugs, and humidity that pasted the pages together in whole clumps. Or they were dryrotted and crumbled like sawdust with too much handling. Much of the other kinds of items were just as bad, foodsoiled pots and pans, crazy mismatched containers often with most of the lids gone, weird ass looking knick knacks all covered in that mix of accumulated kitchen grease and dust and yellowed. Got stuff that reaked of nicotine, ashtray and that yellow old tar from smokers over decades. I've seen it all and then some that had me going like Oh my GOD! How do people even let it get this out of control. It really is an mental illness and the hoarders just can't or won't allow anyone to help, they're embarrassed, so they don't let people in to really see how out of control their incessant collecting is. That's why only after they die or get removed to a facility like a nursing home, can their family members actually get in and discover how bad it is and to start a cleanout. Most are time crunched and so there is where no "sorting" of anything happens, they're just bagging and boxing and hauling it to the nearest thrift store or donation location. Because of this habit, stores like the one i worked at, really started to get very adamant about people making appointments for "whole house hold" pick ups and evaluations of what folks were trying to offload at our donation doors. Most would lie on the phone and say" oh its just a bit of furniture and some boxes or bags." Uh.. no it was never just that. We'd get people roll up with a 26 foot u haul packed to the door! Then they'd get all angry or complain accusing us of "being ungrateful and picky" when we could only accomodate just so much of their donation. Even in an 8 hour day, we had processing of other donations to get out to the sales floor so 2 to 3 trucks like that could tie us up for an hour or more just offloading it. We tried to stay proffessional and respectful but sometimes we just had to really stand firm and tell them "we're sorry but we just can't take your whole truck load. The really sneaky ones determined to be rid of it waited til later in the night, come back after we closed then dump it all right infront and around our donation doors and we'd find areal mess in the morning. By then, others had come along and dug through it all took what ever they wanted, and left us stuck cleaning up the aftermath. By then, all that was left was trash, crap, and broken stuff. We had no way of even knowing whether there was anything saleworthy since i could only see junk. Any good furniture, or anything had been taken and the rest looked like a bomb had exploded out of someone's house or garage. It was crazy and frustrating all at the same time. And the theft in the store by "customers" was also crazy. So when you find items with parts missing, i know by experience that people opened packaging especially if it was near new or lightly used, and just take what they wanted out of it. Especially small cords, earbuds, or other parts that they only wanted and none of the rest of it. Then we employees got the anger from customers that berated us for "charging so much" for something with some or all the pieces or parts gone. Thank other "customers" for that regular occurrance. I know, because some would be saying to us " but i don'nt want or need the whole thing, i just want or need this one piece or part." We'd explain it was'nt possible or that it would rendet the item unsellable. Soon as we walked away, lo and behold, the package was discovered with exactly that piece or part gone. And so was the individual most assuredly the culprit. People don't care about anyone but themseves and what they want at times like that. They clearly feel that they should not be denied and decide that they're gonna take whatever they want. Like i said, I've seen just about every kind of thing working at a thrift store. Most of us don't get paid remotely enough for the crap we end up dealing with on the daily, crazy store policies, theft, massive workloads, time crunches to process and get stuff out to the sales floor, rest room clean ups, furniture bei g loaded to customers cars or vehicles, often times people rolled up ill equipped to haul their purchased furniture home. They would show up to get a couch

People need to know when to throw something away. Some things I don’t even send to the thrift store.

My #1 thrifting tip when looking for natural fiber garments (particularly sweaters) is to look at sizes well above your own. Many people donate items that shrunk and their mistakes can be your gain.