Now, I'm sure some people shudder at the very thought of buying or possessing used (or "pre-owned," to get lofty about it) items, but I don't. Goodwill is, to me, a delicious treat of a store full of serendipity, cause I just never know what I might come across.
The best Goodwill stores in the entire universe are, I'm pretty sure, right here in Portland, and I missed them terribly when I lived in Minnesota. They had a few anemic resale shops there, but they were hard to get to (generally somewhere in the 'hood), small and, I think, not even Goodwill. Maybe Salvation Army. But there wasn't the same Resale Romance there like there is here. I think we're proud of our Goodwill stores here, and rightly so: in a nutshell, they rock.
I mean, clean public bathrooms--AND a cafe? And really decent shit? For real.
And it appeals to my need to live more simply and to search out treasure, which I love doing. I love rummaging around in other people's stuff (literally AND metaphorically, actually), especially their cast-offs. It seems voyeuristic to me, but legitimately so. Everything has a story--as a gift, an impulse buy, a souvenir, a thoughtful purchase, something. And then these same items--some of them perhaps once highly esteemed--were eventually discarded, shunted aside as useless.
And really, there's nothing better to do on a rainy day, of which we have many in Portland, which is perhaps why Goodwill does so well here. I had the pleasure of wandering around an enormous Goodwill this evening with a friend, and here are the items I came away with:
A great lighter-weight Columbia Sportswear women's anorak, practically new, in some of my favorite shades of light blue, $24.99. I've been needing one for a long time; in fact, I really could've used it for my recent New Year's Day birding trip.
Cutie ceramic cat food dish with little paw prints all around it, .99. Time to graduate the tabby from her purple plastic bowl to something a little nicer...
Box of large cat pan liners, .99 (total steal, since these are like four bucks retail; cat shit maintenance can be a costly proposition....)
3 smaller-sized nesting stainless steel mixing bowls (this size is handy for, say, whipping up eggs or making frosting or holding a bunch of grated cheese), $1.99 for all 3 (Williams-Sonoma, BITE me....)
Awesome and BIG stainless-steel insulated to-go coffee cup, obviously unused cause the lid was sorta dusty (needed for rainy commute days), .99.
Grand total: $29.95.
If the definition of neurosis is the inability to accept ambiguity, then wandering the tchatchke-stuffed aisles of Goodwill is one area of my life where I am, blessedly, NOT neurotic; ambiguity, in this circumstance, is part of the fun.
Or as the saying goes, One person's trash is another person's treasure.
I'm all into it.
3 comments:
Did you look for any used Godzilla toys?
Hmmm....I'll bet there'd be some there. They seem to've had just about every other cast-off you could think of....My Little Pony, anyone??
Oh, My Little Pony!
Good times...
The whole entry about going through other peoples things reminds me of a Montana entry I did about vocabulary words. I learned that "Garbology" is the study of a culture by examing that which has been discarded.
You're not a voyeur, you're a garbologist!
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