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Welcome back to We Are the Hands the podcasts where
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we dive into the joy of challended and hilarious moments
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of breaking a big, lively family. Today we're talking about
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one of our absolute favorite things, hand me down and
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thrift storms. Yeah, we are your acting resortful and maybe
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it's just a little bit obsessed with finding the best
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deals on clothes, furniture and random treasures. If you've ever
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experienced the pure joy of snagging and amazing fines for.
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Next to nothing, you're in for a treat. I'm going
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to start by saying, I grew up in a family
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that we got hand me downs, and I loved it.
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There's something so exciting about digging through a bag of
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clothes from an older sibling, a cousin, or a family friend.
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It was like opening a surprise gift. Sure, some things
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were a little questionable, like nineties wardrobe included in at
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least one Neon windbreaker. Every now and then you'd find
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the one thing that made you feel like the coolest
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kid in the world. Let's fast forward to today with
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our crew of kids. Hand me downs are not just
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a way to save money, they are a tradition. Clothes
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in our house go through a full cycle. Something start
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with one kid, gets passed down to another, and maybe
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even another after that, and then it's still in good shape,
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it gets handed off to another family, or if it's
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stained or ripped, we toss it. It's like a little
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piece of history moving from one person to the next.
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I could probably do an ancestry chart just based on
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who wore that sweater first. That's how much we wear
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our clothes in our home, just one kid to another.
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Now let's talk about thrift stores. Oh man, do we
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love a good thrift store. Some people like to spend
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their free time at them all. We prefer aisles of Goodwill,
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Salvation Army, red Rax, or just a random store that
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smells like an odd mix of Grandma's Addict and vanilla candles.
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One of the best things about thrifting for us is
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that you never know what you're gonna find. It's like
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a treasure hunt, except instead of gold, you might find
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a designer jacket for five bucks, or a brand new
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kid's coat that looks like it's never been worn. Don't
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even get me started on furniture sections. I love that section.
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I actually have a piece of furniture that was handed
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down to me when as soon as the weather gets warm,
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I'm gonna be working on making it look unique in
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my own way, and I can't wait to show the
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kids how we can change it. Some of our favorite
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pieces in our house came from either a thrift store
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or a flea market. With a little cleaning and fresh
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coat of paint, something old can become brand new again,
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especially to us. Besides being budget friendly, shopping secondhand is
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actually great for the environment. Instead of tossing clothes or
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household items into a landfill, they get a second, third,
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or even a fourth life. We love to teach our
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kids that just because something isn't brand new doesn't mean
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it's not valuable, and honestly, some of our favorite outfits
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have come from thrift stores, churches, or family friends rather
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than a department store. And let's be real, guys, kids
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grow up so fast. One minute they fit into those
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jeans or shirts, and the next they look like they're
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preparing for a flood. I don't know how many times
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I've had to tell my kids those pants do not
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fit you anymore, get rid of them. Hand me downs
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and thrift store finds make it possible to keep up
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without spending a fortune. Of course, secondhand shopping isn't always
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a smooth experience. Let's talk about a time we bought
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what we thought was a beautiful dress and we get
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home and it wasn't what we thought it was, or
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it had a rip. One time, I remember buying a dress.
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It was supposed to be for I think a wedding
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or something that we were going to beautiful dress. The
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zipper did not work. It looked like it would, you know,
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nothing was wrong with it, but it would not go down.
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Couldn't even get the dress on. Needless to say, the
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day right before the wedding that we were going to,
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I had to go back and find a different dress.
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I was so mad. One thing we really tried to
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teach our kids is that there's no shame in wearing
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secondhand clothes or shopping at thrift stores. It's actually kind
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of cool. They get excited when we find like name
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brand clothes for fraction of the price, or when we
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discover a vintage T shirt that no one else will
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have at school. We want them to understand the value
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isn't always about price. It's about how much something means
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to them. Because you could find a shirt that you
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absolutely adored and you could spend a dollar on it.
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Nobody at school is going to know what you spent
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on it, and you do not have to tell anybody
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how much you spent on it. They could think that
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shirt was twenty bucks. They're never going to know you
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paid a dollar. So that's one of our big things.
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I don't want my kids to feel like they aren't
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part of what everybody else has, you know. I want
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them to be able to have name brand clothes. And
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yes we do buy brand new, name brand stuff. We
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will go to a thrift store or the twenty five
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cent Christian store before I go to a regular store.
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I always try to get the kids new shoes, unless
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it's for something like a play at school or theater
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or something that it's probably just going to get war
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one time and never again. Then we go to the
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thrift store or the twenty five cent store. It's just
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a lot easier to spend a quarter or two dollars
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as opposed to fifty dollars. We check for sales. Some
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thrift stores have discount days, especially like Goodwill. They well
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Goodwill and Red Racks both they have a color day.
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So if you find a yellow tag, it might be
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two dollars, or if you find a blue tag, it
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might be five dollars. They have that at our thrift stores,
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and that is our favorite we go. I pray that
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we hit a day that the price is cheaper. Not
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always do we, but we even tend to go to
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a place called Bid and Digging, and it's like all
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these bins that are set up and you can find blenders,
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and you can find pans, and you can find whatever
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in them bins, and you can buy them for like
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nine ten dollars, sometimes they're five dollars. Just whatever day,
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each day is a different price. Some days it's a dollar,
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some days it's two dollars, some days it's five dollars.
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It just depends on what day you go. And you
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can look online to see what day is which and
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go on those days. I love going into stores like that.
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Love it, and my kids probably think I'm crazy. It
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is something that I get joys from doing, and I
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know they do because when we go in there, they
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are like loading their arms with stuff they want to buy.
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So not all kids have the luxury of getting name
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brand stuff, and not all kids have the luxury of
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buying brand new. I've always taught my kids you never
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tease anybody, because we have done it for so long,
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and I tell them all the time, you do not
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ever have to tell anybody you got that shirt at
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a thrift store, you got them shoes at a thrift store.
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But to me, I would not be ashamed of it,
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because you're getting it for a fraction of the price.
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It looks brand new. Somebody that had the same sweatshirt
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as me that I bought in the thrift store and
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spent four bucks on, they spent forty on theirs. So
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I think we were pretty blessed to be able to
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to go out and find these good deals and be
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able to make sure our kids have clothes they need
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and their name brand most of them. I remember going
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into the Christian store. I found a brand new designer
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person there. The only thing that was wrong with it
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is the strap.
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It was.
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It was a double strap, but the one strap had
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came unstitched, so all I had to do was stitch
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it back up. That purse had a price tag on
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it that said sixty nine ninety nine. I walked out
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of there with that purse for five ninety nine. I
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know I got to steal that day, so you can
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find some real cool things in stores like that. I
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remember another time I went to Goodwill. I was shopping
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for pants and I think a Duffel bag of some
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sort because we were going on a trip. When I
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got home, I was cleaning the Duffel bag, you know,
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getting it ready to go into the wash machine and
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the pants, making sure that all the tags were off,
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and I found a secret pocket in the Duffel bag
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and there was a twenty dollars bill in there. So
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needless to say, that day I walked out of that
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store with an extra fifteen dollars because the purse and
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the pants didn't cost me hardly anything, so with what
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I spent, I got my money back plus an extra
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fifteen dollars. Was pretty cool. One of our favorite things
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about hand me downs too is if you need to
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use them items for a play or like if they
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have silly closed day at school, you can use them
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hand me downs to decorate your clothes however you want
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or whatever the occasion may be for and not feel
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bad about ruining an outfit. We've had to do that
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a lot. Like the kids will have, like especially homecoming week,
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they'll have Silly Hair Day or Crazy Sock Day or
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whatever it may be. One was dressed like your favorite superhero.
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So we made an outfit to look like I don't
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remember if it was Spider Man or Superman. I thought
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it was so fun, and I didn't feel bad because
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those clothes that we used had been handy downs through
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many of our children. I wasn't too worried about it.
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I didn't have to spend a lot, and I went right
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down to the next child anyway, because the next year
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it was the same thing for the homecoming. I remember
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taking the kids into good Will. We were going through
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the clothes. Mind you, they don't wash those clothes when
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they turn them in. Some people are decent and they'll
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wash them, but most of the time they are stored
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in a basement with the mice or whatever is down there. Rodents.
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And we were walking through the store and we came
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to the rack that we needed to come to. It
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was like a sail rack. I'm going through the clothes
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in there, and I picked a shirt off the shelf
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and I was like, oh man, this is a cute shirt,
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but it smelled so bad like cat urine. I wanted
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to buy it, so bad, but I didn't and the
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kids were like, oh man, the smell. We put it
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back and the kids are like, why did Why do
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all these clothes smell so bad? A lot of them
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smelled like just old basement, you know, that musty smell.
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But just see the expression on their face, and oh,
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we don't want that, you know. It was just fun
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to see. We have ran into the not so great
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thrift stores where you go in and you find a
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really nice name brand shirt that you could get at
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a different thrift store for five dollars or ten dollars
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and they want thirty dollars for it. We have ran
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into that. So sometimes your thrifting is not the best.
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You have to really search sometimes to find what you need.
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So why we feel secondhand just makes sense. One, it
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saves so much money, especially with kids who grow fast
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and with a lot of kids like us. Two, it's
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better for the planet, less way and more reuse. Three,
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it teaches kids not to be materialistic and to value
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things beyond their price tag, which my kids they love thrifting,
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so I never have to worry about that. Most importantly,
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it's so fun the treasures that we find. We even
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find like curling irons, flat irons, stuff like that we
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find so cheap, and most of the time they are
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still in the package. Some of the must checks for
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thrift shopping is checking for stains, missing buttons, and a
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zipper that actually works, because that tends to happen you
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get home. Oh man, the button's missing on a pair
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of jeans, or the jeans are ripped in between the legs.
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It's hard to fix a pair of when they're ripped.
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Don't be afraid to upcycle a little sewing That is okay.
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If it's a small spot that needs to be sewed,
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I don't have a problem sewing it. It's the really
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big ones, or like jeans, they're really hard to sew.
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We always make it an adventure when me and the
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kids go. I try to make it so fun for them,
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like they like to help pick out their clothes or
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their treasures. They're way more excited to wear the clothes
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that they pick out, so that helps too. You also
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have to know when to say no. Just because it's
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cheap doesn't mean you need it. I mean, if it's
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a great deal and I know they're gonna wear it
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or they're gonna use it, I do buy it just
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because sometimes it's that type of thing you just buy
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it because you know you're gonna use it eventually. And
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I don't mean like a year later, I mean within
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the next month or so. I'm gonna end this with
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my final thoughts by saying, whether it's a hand me
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down sweater that's been worn by every kid in the
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house or a thrift store treasure that you probably got
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for two dollars, there's something special about secondhand shopping. It's