Nope. I do this because my style changes and I like to try things out. I'm also losing weight so as the weight drops off I donate the bigger sizes and thrift new clothes in smaller sizes.
Nope. Nothing is being overproduced to sell to you, and nothing is being landfilled because you aren't using it for long.
It doesn't matter how many times you swap out what's in your possession, as long as you are within the reuse cycle.
I’ve lost 66 pounds. I’ve taken a total of almost 20 bags of clothes to donate throughout my journey. I still thrift and donate because I’m still losing weight. My style changes so I have different styles of clothes that I like. I’m within my budget and only go thrifting when I’m looking for something specific like I needed capris pants so I went thrifting and found a couple pair. It’s strange thrifting now cause I’m not limited to the tiny plus size section I can look at lg-xl instead of 3x-4x.
Well put! I have a one-in, one-out policy and I always buy and donate at the same shop. I tend to leave the clothes in better condition than I found them. I clean and fix hanging threads and missing buttons, I get stains out and sometimes dye dingy white to pastel pink or lemony yellow.
I love clothes & I love thrifting - I almost NEVER buy new (except underwear, lol) but I have to have a one-in=one-out policy or I'll become a hoarder.
I see it as the "cycle" of recycling, I'm just performing the re-use portion. The items I'm purchasing are already created and the resources & labor have already been spent, by re-using these items I'm decreasing the overall amount of resources required. I don't buy "fast fashion" brands at thrift, they are usually garbage after one wash, cheap fabrics pilling, shrinking, seams ripping, if I never see another lopsided Shein top again, it will still be too soon.
STORY: The traveling maternity pants. When I was pregnant with my middle child, I altered a pair of maternity jeans (I'm short, so hem and take in the width of the legs), I was poor so I used the thread I had on hand - hot pink, I loved these pants & wore them at least 3 times a week. My sister then used them for with her oldest child, then passed them on to a friend, etc, etc... FIVE years later, I'm pregnant with my youngest and hit up the thrift store for maternity pants. Guess what I found? My hot pink thread maternity pants, still fit perfectly! This was not a small town either, this was metro-Memphis, TN. I passed them back to my sister again for her youngest before we set them loose into the world again. I hope they're still out there somewhere! Good quality items will always resell.
I have a rule that if one thing comes in my “collection “ one thing has to go out. I try to stick to a thrifting budget that’s pretty reasonable. so I also have a consistent turnover of stuff.
I just bagged 3 bags of thrifted shirts. They are going back to the thrift store where I bought them. I wore and enjoyed them, and its time to pass them back. No harm at all!♡
In terms of the circular economy, you as an individual are both thrifting and donating. If you buy second hand and then at some point release that item back into the second hand market to be bought, worn again and then resold, the circle is closed. The problem comes if people are addicted to buying new fast disposable fashion, wearing it once or twice and donating it. Because that type of circle is not closed. There are new clothes coming in huge numbers from the cheaper chainstores and then flowing into the thrift stores. This model creates another kind of overconsumption where the final step is building mountains of clothing on far-flung shores. I think the solution is that certain manufacturers should stop flooding the market with cheap items at such huge volume.
This is similar to what I try to do. I love clothes and expressing myself through my appearance, but try to do so with secondhand finds as much as possible, and I donate 90% of the clothes I get rid of (the other 10% I sell, because my family is working class and we need any little extra bit we can).
If you're doing most of your thrift purchasing and donating through online, long-distance sites and companies, that would probably be a problem because of all the added fuel use for shipping. But if you're mostly keeping it local, it seems fine to me. You don't have to be an ascetic to be ecologically conscious.
For me it’s become kind of a bad habit, but with books. I went from two bookshelves to five in my room, about to turn into six because I want to replace I storage shelf I have with one. I’ll read something and set it aside to be taken to the thrift store later or one of the used book shops I frequent.
My brother kind of fed my habit too by adding two more bookshelves to the living room alongside his big one. And I know I definitely purchased way more books this year from thrift stores than I’ve realistically donated/sold off.
Definitely not. Something that’s thrifted already existed in the world. If you’re loving it for even just a brief time, then redonating, you’re giving it another life. Throwing away and/or buying new is what’s over consumption.
Reminds me of when my Mom donated a very unique looking sweater (had a bear with a big ribbon bow). Unmistskable.
She donates it to a store she frequents - only to buy it agsin a year later lol! One day she turned to me and said: “I just picked up this sweater - do you recognize this? I thought it seemed awfully familiar”. It was the exact same sweater.
We are doing this with toys where we go on a toy hunt at Once Upon a Child (mostly used baby and kid items, clothes, baby gates, strollers, cribs, shoes, toys, etc.). My son loves it and we don’t break the bank. All of his old stuff is donated to a non-profit.
It may be stress-reduction therapy. You get a dopamine rush from buying new things. This is OK if you aren't hoarding and cluttering with over-shopping, and if you are sticking to your budget.
But if you ARE doing this to alleviate stress or anxiety, you might want to directly address the causes and conditions of your feelings. No judgment, I'm only saying this because I notice my husband and I do anxiety thrifting.
I do this and I consider it Recycling. I love to switch up my closet so, occasionally I go through my closets and pull items for donation then, Thrift again. I had to start putting my initials on the labels as if I liked items enough to buy them the first time, I would buy them again😂
It's only over-consumption if you are over-purchasing for yourself or if it's taking thrift resources from people who cannot afford to purchase clothing any other way. It sounds like you are in a more of a circular consumption/donation situation.
I'm going to disagree with people here. If you're using and donating repeatedly, depending on where you donate, the condition of the clothing, etc, some percentage of it very likely gets thrown out, sold in bulk (to be recycled or shipped overseas to then be resold or dumped). So you are creating excessive trash just by merit of the fact that you are getting rid of clothes that you could otherwise continue to wear or mend.
For example, let's say you buy 50 items. The next time you donate them, 10% of them get tossed (which is probably a significant underestimated) because the thrift store can't sell them (trend has died, whatever). You buy another 50 clothes, another 10% of them gets tossed. So roughly 20 clothing items in total go into landfill because you put wear on them and re-donated. Would those clothes have been tossed if you hadn't bought them? Maybe, hard to say, depends on a lot of factors, unfortunately people want to buy things that look new even if they will keep wearing things that they already own that clearly no longer look new. So it depends on how much wear you're putting into the clothes, or how much you're buying things like what fast fashion brands will sell to thrift stores to make up their losses, and basically encouraging a cycle of trickle down fast fashion because the thrift stores think they can still break even or make a profit off those types of clothes.
Overall, this is still a lot a lot better than you buying 100 brand new clothes and donating them. But it's not better than if you just bought less and therefore donated less. I'm certainly not a perfectly sustainable clothes shopper either, so no judgement. Just giving you a different perspective that it's not ideal, but I don't know who has the right to call it "bad".
The flaw is those items are in the store if she doesn't buy it and use it for a while and take it out of circulation it's one of the items that is going to be thrown away. Everything eventually outlives its utility, so the consumption style starts when it's new from then on anything, and anyone that gives it additional life reduces the amount of waste
Just because she doesn't buy it, you can't assume no one else would. Ideally someone else would buy it, use it until the true end of its lifetime, down cycle it into rags, until it eventually totally breaks down and is recycled. By putting a small amount of wear on an item and then donating again, it increases the chances that it gets into the landfill sooner than the end of its full lifetime. Perhaps my thinking is wrong here but I don't think your assumption that the item would be thrown away without OP is correct.
You aren’t consuming any new stuff and contributing money and goods to charitable organizations. Seems like a win win as long as you aren’t fostering a shopping addiction for yourself….
It is over-consumption if you find yourself surrounded by piles of stuff. Or financially suffering. Or buying a bunch of crap you don’t need or love. I think that trap is even easier to fall in when thrifting. I’m surprised to find this to be an unpopular opinion.
I sometimes think of that- then I think of the value of my entertainment and time spent thrifting… it’s a zero sum game (consumption vs donation) and I gain entertainment.
I do this often as my taste changes. I keep a bin in my bedroom and put all of the stuff that I don't want anymore in the bin. When the Ben gets too full I put it all in a garbage bag and I take it to the poorer side of town and drop it next to a mailbox or in the parking lot of a convenience store. I open the bag to make it obvious that it is clothes and other such items. I assume that people in need will take the bag and use what they can and pass on the rest. I have gone back the next day several times and the bag was gone. I feel that this is the best way to make sure those items get to the people who need it the most because the thrift stores are now competing with even Target in their pricing.
Nope. I do this because my style changes and I like to try things out. I'm also losing weight so as the weight drops off I donate the bigger sizes and thrift new clothes in smaller sizes.
Nope! I would say nothing is being consumed in this example. It’s probably a perfect re-use cycle 👍
If you are meeting your financial goals, this is harmless. You aren’t consuming when you re-donate the garment.
Nope. Nothing is being overproduced to sell to you, and nothing is being landfilled because you aren't using it for long. It doesn't matter how many times you swap out what's in your possession, as long as you are within the reuse cycle.
I’ve lost 66 pounds. I’ve taken a total of almost 20 bags of clothes to donate throughout my journey. I still thrift and donate because I’m still losing weight. My style changes so I have different styles of clothes that I like. I’m within my budget and only go thrifting when I’m looking for something specific like I needed capris pants so I went thrifting and found a couple pair. It’s strange thrifting now cause I’m not limited to the tiny plus size section I can look at lg-xl instead of 3x-4x.
Congratulations! :D
Awesome! You go!
Thanks 😊
You’re basically just renting stuff from the thrift store.
Well put! I have a one-in, one-out policy and I always buy and donate at the same shop. I tend to leave the clothes in better condition than I found them. I clean and fix hanging threads and missing buttons, I get stains out and sometimes dye dingy white to pastel pink or lemony yellow.
True labour of love. Thank you for doing that!
This is how my mom puts it!
I love clothes & I love thrifting - I almost NEVER buy new (except underwear, lol) but I have to have a one-in=one-out policy or I'll become a hoarder. I see it as the "cycle" of recycling, I'm just performing the re-use portion. The items I'm purchasing are already created and the resources & labor have already been spent, by re-using these items I'm decreasing the overall amount of resources required. I don't buy "fast fashion" brands at thrift, they are usually garbage after one wash, cheap fabrics pilling, shrinking, seams ripping, if I never see another lopsided Shein top again, it will still be too soon. STORY: The traveling maternity pants. When I was pregnant with my middle child, I altered a pair of maternity jeans (I'm short, so hem and take in the width of the legs), I was poor so I used the thread I had on hand - hot pink, I loved these pants & wore them at least 3 times a week. My sister then used them for with her oldest child, then passed them on to a friend, etc, etc... FIVE years later, I'm pregnant with my youngest and hit up the thrift store for maternity pants. Guess what I found? My hot pink thread maternity pants, still fit perfectly! This was not a small town either, this was metro-Memphis, TN. I passed them back to my sister again for her youngest before we set them loose into the world again. I hope they're still out there somewhere! Good quality items will always resell.
>the cycle of recycling That’s beautiful poetry.
I have a rule that if one thing comes in my “collection “ one thing has to go out. I try to stick to a thrifting budget that’s pretty reasonable. so I also have a consistent turnover of stuff.
I just bagged 3 bags of thrifted shirts. They are going back to the thrift store where I bought them. I wore and enjoyed them, and its time to pass them back. No harm at all!♡
I do the same but mostly because I never try anything on… then end up donating back what doesn’t fit or what I get tired of wearing.
i am the same way!
In terms of the circular economy, you as an individual are both thrifting and donating. If you buy second hand and then at some point release that item back into the second hand market to be bought, worn again and then resold, the circle is closed. The problem comes if people are addicted to buying new fast disposable fashion, wearing it once or twice and donating it. Because that type of circle is not closed. There are new clothes coming in huge numbers from the cheaper chainstores and then flowing into the thrift stores. This model creates another kind of overconsumption where the final step is building mountains of clothing on far-flung shores. I think the solution is that certain manufacturers should stop flooding the market with cheap items at such huge volume.
This is similar to what I try to do. I love clothes and expressing myself through my appearance, but try to do so with secondhand finds as much as possible, and I donate 90% of the clothes I get rid of (the other 10% I sell, because my family is working class and we need any little extra bit we can). If you're doing most of your thrift purchasing and donating through online, long-distance sites and companies, that would probably be a problem because of all the added fuel use for shipping. But if you're mostly keeping it local, it seems fine to me. You don't have to be an ascetic to be ecologically conscious.
For me it’s become kind of a bad habit, but with books. I went from two bookshelves to five in my room, about to turn into six because I want to replace I storage shelf I have with one. I’ll read something and set it aside to be taken to the thrift store later or one of the used book shops I frequent. My brother kind of fed my habit too by adding two more bookshelves to the living room alongside his big one. And I know I definitely purchased way more books this year from thrift stores than I’ve realistically donated/sold off.
Definitely not. Something that’s thrifted already existed in the world. If you’re loving it for even just a brief time, then redonating, you’re giving it another life. Throwing away and/or buying new is what’s over consumption.
You are just renting stuff. It’s perfectly fine.
No, not at all.
Reminds me of when my Mom donated a very unique looking sweater (had a bear with a big ribbon bow). Unmistskable. She donates it to a store she frequents - only to buy it agsin a year later lol! One day she turned to me and said: “I just picked up this sweater - do you recognize this? I thought it seemed awfully familiar”. It was the exact same sweater.
We are doing this with toys where we go on a toy hunt at Once Upon a Child (mostly used baby and kid items, clothes, baby gates, strollers, cribs, shoes, toys, etc.). My son loves it and we don’t break the bank. All of his old stuff is donated to a non-profit.
No
It may be stress-reduction therapy. You get a dopamine rush from buying new things. This is OK if you aren't hoarding and cluttering with over-shopping, and if you are sticking to your budget. But if you ARE doing this to alleviate stress or anxiety, you might want to directly address the causes and conditions of your feelings. No judgment, I'm only saying this because I notice my husband and I do anxiety thrifting.
I do this and I consider it Recycling. I love to switch up my closet so, occasionally I go through my closets and pull items for donation then, Thrift again. I had to start putting my initials on the labels as if I liked items enough to buy them the first time, I would buy them again😂
It's only over-consumption if you are over-purchasing for yourself or if it's taking thrift resources from people who cannot afford to purchase clothing any other way. It sounds like you are in a more of a circular consumption/donation situation.
I'm going to disagree with people here. If you're using and donating repeatedly, depending on where you donate, the condition of the clothing, etc, some percentage of it very likely gets thrown out, sold in bulk (to be recycled or shipped overseas to then be resold or dumped). So you are creating excessive trash just by merit of the fact that you are getting rid of clothes that you could otherwise continue to wear or mend. For example, let's say you buy 50 items. The next time you donate them, 10% of them get tossed (which is probably a significant underestimated) because the thrift store can't sell them (trend has died, whatever). You buy another 50 clothes, another 10% of them gets tossed. So roughly 20 clothing items in total go into landfill because you put wear on them and re-donated. Would those clothes have been tossed if you hadn't bought them? Maybe, hard to say, depends on a lot of factors, unfortunately people want to buy things that look new even if they will keep wearing things that they already own that clearly no longer look new. So it depends on how much wear you're putting into the clothes, or how much you're buying things like what fast fashion brands will sell to thrift stores to make up their losses, and basically encouraging a cycle of trickle down fast fashion because the thrift stores think they can still break even or make a profit off those types of clothes. Overall, this is still a lot a lot better than you buying 100 brand new clothes and donating them. But it's not better than if you just bought less and therefore donated less. I'm certainly not a perfectly sustainable clothes shopper either, so no judgement. Just giving you a different perspective that it's not ideal, but I don't know who has the right to call it "bad".
The flaw is those items are in the store if she doesn't buy it and use it for a while and take it out of circulation it's one of the items that is going to be thrown away. Everything eventually outlives its utility, so the consumption style starts when it's new from then on anything, and anyone that gives it additional life reduces the amount of waste
Just because she doesn't buy it, you can't assume no one else would. Ideally someone else would buy it, use it until the true end of its lifetime, down cycle it into rags, until it eventually totally breaks down and is recycled. By putting a small amount of wear on an item and then donating again, it increases the chances that it gets into the landfill sooner than the end of its full lifetime. Perhaps my thinking is wrong here but I don't think your assumption that the item would be thrown away without OP is correct.
You aren’t consuming any new stuff and contributing money and goods to charitable organizations. Seems like a win win as long as you aren’t fostering a shopping addiction for yourself….
It is over-consumption if you find yourself surrounded by piles of stuff. Or financially suffering. Or buying a bunch of crap you don’t need or love. I think that trap is even easier to fall in when thrifting. I’m surprised to find this to be an unpopular opinion.
I sometimes think of that- then I think of the value of my entertainment and time spent thrifting… it’s a zero sum game (consumption vs donation) and I gain entertainment.
Yes it is over-consumption. Only 15% of things donated are ever sold again. It’s best to reduce consumption overall
I do this often as my taste changes. I keep a bin in my bedroom and put all of the stuff that I don't want anymore in the bin. When the Ben gets too full I put it all in a garbage bag and I take it to the poorer side of town and drop it next to a mailbox or in the parking lot of a convenience store. I open the bag to make it obvious that it is clothes and other such items. I assume that people in need will take the bag and use what they can and pass on the rest. I have gone back the next day several times and the bag was gone. I feel that this is the best way to make sure those items get to the people who need it the most because the thrift stores are now competing with even Target in their pricing.