June 16, 2014
I love going into thrift shops.
You can find some of the most amazing things there!
Books, cutlery, clothes and decor — there really isn’t anything you can’t find in a thrift store.
For a tenth the price of anywhere else, there really is gold to be found in these hills. Some of the best things you have to dig for, and sometimes they aren’t even there when you need them to be.
But if you go into the shop with open arms, sometimes you find exactly the kind of thing you need.
I went with my amazing girlfriend to 50 Kent — the MCC thrift store in Kitchener that is known in the area for having some pretty great stuff. MCC in itself is an amazing organization, and I would strongly recommend everyone give them a look when they have the chance.
But I went in with the right mindset: I don’t actually need anything.
I have been making a promise to myself this holiday season not simply to look for things to buy because it is that time of year, but rather to find the things people would actually want to pay for themselves.
In a material, commercially-driven world, I strongly think we need to change from acquiring MORE stuff, to acquiring THE RIGHT stuff.
Focus on quality over quantity.
And the beauty of quality, is that it is really subjective.
Why should quality mean expensive? Is Gucci any better quality than hand-sewn? Would you rather have a $5000 Chanel, gold leaf scarf, or one lovingly knit by your own grandmother?
I would much rather the second one.
Buy good stuff is nice, but the best stuff you can’t buy.
The best stuff, as Tom Kelley, cofounder of IDEO says in the documentary Objectified (which I have personally watched probably 15 times), the best things are those that get better with time.
What is something that you own that gets better with time?
My computer doesn’t get better with time. In fact it gets much worse.
My bed surely doesn’t get better with time. My back is killing me.
My toothbrush, my shoes, even that expensive suit I bought doesn’t get better with time.
But my notepad does. Every time I use it, I semi-permanently ingrain the time and place and thoughts of a day-gone-by into my external memory source. That, and every time it crinkles a little more, it becomes used, tattered, and uniquely my own. No other notebook in the world will get used or damaged or bent the way mine does. And that’s pretty neat!
The desk I am currently writing on gets better with time. In fact, it isn’t even my desk! My roommate and I were walking home late one night and spotted it out on a curb, and I liked it so much, I carried it to our house and have had it ever since.
We may have been a little bit inebriated when this happened, but it is excellent nonetheless.
The desk is tattered and scratched and beaten up and cracked, but it is mine. It has a million stories engraved into its face, and continues to age gracefully. One day I might just pitch it, or cut it up and make something uniquely new with it, but until then, I am happy with it. It is big and beautiful and does everything I need a desk to do.
The frying pan I own is one of my favourite gifts like this. Every time I make an egg in this particular pan, which I use almost exclusively for making eggs, I feel a slightly closer connection to the pan. Is that weird? Probably.
But this pan is as much growing and changing as I am. In my own kitchen, I want the kind of equipment I trust to do the job I need them to do. I want a knife that fits my hand and is uniquely mine (like the chef’s knife I currently use and is chipped just where I want it to be) and I want pans that heat the way I know they will.
They aren’t perfect by any stretch, but they are mine. And that’s good enough for me.
But one of the most important pieces of my kitchen is my cookbook collection.
Yes, you read that right, it’s a collection.
And the beautiful thing about this collection, is nearly all of these books are bought second-hand.
Why buy a new cookbook? Is it to say that the food someone conceived 5 years ago will be less delicious than the food you can find in a bookstore cookbook today? Unlikely.
I don’t care much for trendy cuisine anyways. Mostly because I am not nearly the chef that food demands.
But when it comes to making delicious food, there are books I trust.
And all of them are second-hand.
They aren’t cheap or tattered though.
I have a Jamie Oliver cookbook called COOK which I bought for $4.
Wait, hold-up.
$4!?
$4!!!!!??????? FOUR DOLLARS!????
Yup. Four bucks.
It is a $50 cookbook which I bought from 50 Kent for $4. And it is a thing of beauty.
Not only is it Jamie Oliver, who is personally a hero of mine, but it is previously used loved, and left in that twilight zone between perfectly cared for and loved fully. You can tell someone has flipped through these pages, but was careful not to rip them.
This is the best condition you can find a cookbook in.
Other than having bits of food splattered in it. That’s my favourite.
But when I think of thrift stores, I think of the stories behind these things.
Did people intentionally throw these out? Did they not have a use for them anymore? Or were they just trying to pass along all the joy and love these things brought to them previously?
I like to think the second one.
So this holiday season, I encourage you to pass on the love. Take something you own that you care about, and donate it to a thrift store. Let someone else get the joys of using it, loving it, and becoming one with it, just as you have.
The holidays are a time of giving. And that doesn’t mean doing something new. It means doing something thoughtful.
So skip the mall. Pass up on the gift cards. Give something pre-loved, re-loved, and to-be-loved, because that is the greatest gift of all.
There is a cookbook next to me called Muffin Mania, bought for $2, that has message in the front:
Dear Mum,
Welcome home
Happy ThanksgivingLove Barb
October 1982
Thank you Barb, thank you Barb’s Mum, for this beautiful gift. I promise to love it the way I know the both of you did.
And adequately stuff my face with baked goods for the holidays.
Merry Christmas everyone.