<p>^^I love this image of you sitting and guarding atop a pile of legos, playmobile, brio & British Museum dinosaurs.</p>
<p>What is your total bag count now? Are you keeping a spreadsheet? </p>
<p>I am so very impressed with everyone on this thread. It’s inspiring!</p>
<p>Recently, I met a woman of modest means who was going to Hawaii - her fifth trip there in 5 years! How does she finance it? She shops the Goodwill 50 cent sale and sells it all on E-Bay! She said that she loves talking about her “hobby” and I was certainly intrigued. Her biggest sellers were jeans of all kinds and (surprise!) ladies swim suits, especially in large sizes. Apparently, ladies do not wish to try them on in stores.
I find this appalling! I thought Goodwill was where suburban kids bought their Halloween costumes and people of modest means purchased clothing. I don’t think I can give to Goodwill any longer. I would like to donate to victims of fire and other natural disasters.
Any thoughts??</p>
<p>It’s a free country. There’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with VeryHappy. She’s a reseller: thrift shop edition. </p>
<p>If anything, kudos to her for finding a way to get her vacations paid for! </p>
<p>ksm: you might be interested in this book:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.overdressedthebook.com/”>http://www.overdressedthebook.com/</a></p>
<p>Cline writes that most Goodwill garments never get sold or get sold overseas, creating a negative impact on local economies. There is too much used clothing. We are just creating too much junk clothing without any resale or even reuse market. I think the woman is doing a good thing, getting some of this surplus to those who can use it. I also support small women owned businesses. A woman I met by chance in an upscale boutique has been selling my gently used clothing on ebay for more than a decade. We split 50/50. Works for both of us.</p>
<p>*Most Americans are thoroughly convinced there is another person in their direct vicinity who truly needs and wants our unwanted clothes. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Charities long ago passed the point of being able to sell all of our wearable unwanted clothes. According to John Paben, co-owner of used-clothing processer Mid- West Textile, “They never could.”</p>
<p>There are thousands of secondhand textile processors in the United States today, mostly small family businesses, many of them several generations old. I visited Trans- Americas Trading Co., a third- generation textile recycler in Clifton, N.J., which employs 85 people and processes close to 17 million pounds of used clothing a year. Inside Trans-Americas, there is a wall of cubed-up clothing five bales tall and more than 20 bales long. “This is literally several hundred thousand pounds of textile waste, and we bring in two trailer loads of this much every day,” Trans-Americas president Eric Stubin told me. The volume they process has gone up over the years alongside our consumption of clothing.*</p>
<p><a href=“The Salvation Army and Goodwill: Inside the places your clothes go when you donate them.”>http://www.slate.com/articles/life/fashion/2012/06/the_salvation_army_and_goodwill_inside_the_places_your_clothes_go_when_you_donate_them_.html</a></p>
<p>A very interesting subject to me. And sort of on point with this thread. </p>
<p>^^Fascinating, alh – I had no idea.</p>
<p>Are cheaply made, trendy clothes akin to empty calories? </p>
<p>The money Goodwill makes is used for job training purposes around here. Honestly, I don’t care who buys the stuff…and I buy stuff there too. Donations net them income, and that helps,their clients…which is what matters.</p>
<p>Agree, thumper. If they can sell it for 50 cents, that’s 50 cents towards their costs of operation and hopefully that’s more than it costs them to get the item through their system. If the lady can make a decent living by that method, kudos to her. It is no different than all these tech startups raising money to build their apps that help clients to resell stuff that was produced by someone else. </p>
<p>Perhaps I did not state my point well. I don’t fault the e-bay seller at all - she is pretty smart for buying low and selling at a nice profit. What I meant was that I once felt good that a needy person might use my donations and no longer feel this way at all! Best practice for me would be not to buy so much in the first place!</p>
<p>A needy person just might still use your donations. A women buying gently used clothing and reselling them does not defeat the purpose of Goodwill. Teenagers go around thrifting. Does them buying clothes undermine Goodwill’s purpose? No. Those who need clothes at a low price still have those clothes available to them. If your still turned off by Goodwill, donate to another place. A church. A school. A clothing drive. Don’t stop donating. </p>
<p>Once I’ve given it away – which I’m doing to clean out my closets, not fill someone else’s – I’m done with it and it’s no longer any of my business.</p>
<p>I think the facts that some of the shoppers at Goodwill do not need to shop there, and that a few of them are actually making a profit on the items that they buy at Goodwill, do not counteract the facts that many of the people who shop at Goodwill need to stretch their budgets, and the donations do help them. Also, in this area, Goodwill provides employment for all of the people who collect and sort the donations, and prepare them for sale. Actually, the standard message at the local drop-off center thanks donors for providing work for the people at the collection center.</p>
<p>Clothing is sorted in our region, depending on its type, condition, and whether it is either classic or fashionable on the one hand, or totally out of date on the other. Some of the clothing is kept locally and is sold in the Goodwill stores to people who need it. I believe that the local Goodwill may sort books, also. In the past, they have sorted out the books that I received from Book of the Month Club due to forgetting to mail in my “Don’t send” requests in time. I’m guessing that they have too many of these . . . but perhaps these are the books that sell the best?</p>
<p>I give items that are educational and will probably be used in the local schools directly to QMP’s former teachers, along with some children’s books that are just for fun, but useful for young readers. Obviously, there are a number of other agencies and organizations to whom donations can be given directly, if one is leery of Goodwill. </p>
<p>Just took 4 bags to Goodwill, 6 bags to the trashcan and one large bag of paper for shredding. The boys’ rooms are looking good!</p>
<p>S2 was home this week, so I had him go through stuff in his room. Every flat surface, other than the floor was covered with piles of stuff. He’s 24yo and found stuff from middle school. He didn’t get through everything, but came up with 2 boxes of books to donate, 2 bags for recycling, and 2 bags of trash. </p>
<p>He probably would have gotten rid of more, except DH, the packrat, was “helping”. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree with those two. </p>
<p>Was putting away S’s laundry on Saturday morning and got him to look at the clothes in his drawers. Ended up with about 15-20 items to give away. He was very willing to give away stuff - then in walks H who’s horrified that we are giving away these t-shirts/jerseys. Funny thing is several of S’s basketball jerseys ran really big and now H can wear them comfortably - he took them all to our room saying he would use them for running. Sigh…</p>
<p>I feel your pain, arisamp. After getting S2 to go through his stuff, and discovering that a whole shelf of books were actually ones that S1 had enjoyed, I made the mistake of asking S1 if he wanted me to donate them or save them for him. He doesn’t seem to really care about the books, but can’t imagine just giving them away. So now those books are just getting moved from S2’s room to S1’s. I’m giving S1 6 months to get them out of my house and into his, or they are getting donated. Maybe S1 will feel differently about donations when he can get a tax deduction for them.</p>
<p>Number One rule of decluttering: If the owner of the item agrees to get rid of it, never ask another family member if they want the item. Science has shown that 88% of the time, the other family member will say yes. 
</p>
<p>Now you tell me, VH. Where were you last night when I needed that information?</p>