HAUL: Village Thrift

Having recently moved to a new house (and the first one that we own), I've been making almost weekly trips to the home improvement stores. I noticed a thrift store, Village Thrift, in the same plaza as my local Lowe's and have been wondering what the store is like. (Unfortunately, while their cash registers are quite up-to-date, they appear to have no web site and apparently have only the one location.)

I had heard their best deals are on Mondays, so Juliana and I headed over on Monday to check it out. Overall, I was impressed with the store: it's large, well-organized, and offers just about everything, without offering a lot of items that feel like trash. However, I had some major problems with the prices. Many items I saw still had their original tags, or tags from other thrift/yard sales, but often the Village Thrift price was equal to or more than the other tags. For example, I found one shirt with its original tags, which showed many prices, ending with a final clearance price of $7.20; Village Thrift was offering the shirt for $8.90. One of the shirts I bought had another tag on it for $3.00, but Village Thrift was charging $4.90. I also noticed that many items, particularly popular brands, had prices that were close to what they would sell for new, like an H&M knit dress for $19.90.

So, while I'll certainly be going back because it's so close and large, I'll have to be very vigilant regarding brands and prices to ensure I'm actually getting good deals. I also plan to only ever shop there on Mondays, when certain colored tags are 50% off, and Sundays, when certain colored tags are other percentages off — the regular prices were not good enough for me, especially since I'm usually buying items that simply hit my fancy, and not items that I actually need.

Anyway, enough with the review, and on to the haul!

The Goods

Gray knit dress

Sparkly tunic shirt

Empire-waist shirt

Flowered shirt

Straight jeans

Word Spot coffee table game

I brought home 6 items for $23; not bad!

Read through for specific details on prices and brands.

The Details

We didn't spend much time in the store, so I didn't have a chance to look through all the departments. I mainly browsed the women's department, with a glance through the games. My haul included:

• 1 dress: a gray Gap knit dress with a tie-back at the waist for $4.45 (50% off of $8.90)
  Compare at about $50+
• 1 tunic shirt: a Nine West sparkly black tunic shirt for $4.95 (50% off of $9.90)
  Compare at approximately $40+
• 2 shirts: a flowered empire-waist No Boundaries 3/4-length sleeve shirt and a blue flowered White Stag 3/4-length sleeve shirt for $2.45/ea. (50% off of $4.90/ea.)
  Compare at about $10/ea.
• 1 pair of jeans: a pair of straight-leg Calvin Klein jeans for $4.95 (50% off of $9.90)
  Compare at $49.50+
• 1 game: Word Spot, a word search coffee table game that's a cross between Scrabble and Boggle, for $2.61 (33% off of $3.90)
  List price: $19.99