Thrift Week 2021, Day 7: Puzzles

It was below freezing this morning, with a stiff wind, but Brian and I made a point of leaving the house right after breakfast anyway and heading out into the cold on food. With our neighborhood thrift shop now open only in the mornings, except on Sunday, it was our only chance to include it in my local shopping challenge before Thrift Week comes to an end tonight. And it would certainly have made a great dramatic finale if I had scored some amazing find there, like a warm and cozy cardigan or a colorful pullover, for only a buck.

Sadly, that did not happen. I did try on one little jacket that seemed to fit fairly well, but the mirror — once I managed to locate it — told me that it was bunching up in a very unflattering way. And I found a pair of corduroy pants that might have been worth trying on, except the girls' bathroom that passes for a dressing room was completely blocked with boxes. So, alas, no thrift shop bonanza for me.

However, we did not leave empty-handed. While I was looking at clothes, Brian was examining the toy and game shelf, and he emerged with four, count 'em, four 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Well, I did promise him that he could have anything he wanted when his grant application was done, and apparently, what he really wants is to spend some time working on puzzles. (Plus his parents gave us a fancy puzzle mat for Christmas, which makes jigsaw puzzles and cats compatible.) And, once we were able to track someone down to take our money, it was only three bucks for the lot. New, they'd probably have cost at least $10 each.

This experience sort of highlighted the best and worst aspects of this particular thrift shop. You can find occasional gems there at truly amazing prices, but they sure don't make it easy for you. There's been a sort of halfhearted attempt to sort clothes by type and size, but the volunteers clearly can't maintain the organization, so clothes end up in sort of random piles on the table, the rack, even the floor. The one mirror is way in the back where you can't easily find it. There's no proper dressing room, and the space that passes for one isn't always accessible. And you often have to hunt all over the shop looking for someone to take your money.

All of which would seem to be an argument against shopping locally, were it not for one problem: other thrift shops within driving distance aren't really better. There was one really good thrift shop in Pennington five years ago, but it's closed down. And while there are several left that have larger selections, they also have higher prices, and I still can't usually find anything there that looks good on me. And if I'm going to visit a thrift shop and almost certainly walk out with nothing, I might as well do it in town and save gas.

I made one additional purchase to round out the trip: some more medicine from the Rite Aid. I didn't absolutely need to buy it now, but on my last trip there they gave me a $5-off-$20 coupon, and this seemed like a good chance to use it. The pills I needed were actually priced at $19.99 for the biggest bottle — one cent shy of the amount needed to use the coupon — so I added a bag of kale chips to my order to put myself over the limit. But, as it turned out, no dice: the pills were on sale for $17.99, a fact that wasn't advertised on the shelf, so even with the chips I was still under the limit. I could have gone back and looked for something that cost $2.01, but I decided to just cancel the chips, take my $2 savings, and leave. Which I did — with a second $5-off-$20 coupon for this purchase, which I almost certainly won't be able to use either. Oh well.

That wraps up my week of local shopping, so it's time for the final tally:

• Magnesium supplements (Rite Aid): $10 for two bottles. Minimum price elsewhere: $10 each, or $20 for two.
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $1.66. (I checked, and scallion prices at H-Mart were a little higher than I'd guessed. Though technically, those cheaper prices were at local stores too, so I'm not sure if this even counts.)
  
• Flowers (Robert's Florals): $15. Minimum price elsewhere: $10.
• Gin (Pino's): $10 for one liter. Minimum price elsewhere: $9.30 per liter (and again, that's technically local, since the cheaper price was at Rite Aid).
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $11.03. Minimum price elsewhere: Probably around $11.03 also.
• Socks (dollar store): $8 for three pairs. Minimum price elsewhere: $8 for two pairs, or $12 for three.
  
• Olives (Ellin Kon): $5 for 13 ounces. Minimum price elsewhere: around $7 per pound, or $5.69 for 13 ounces.
• Hazelnut chocolate (Ellin Kon): $0.94. Minimum price elsewhere: around $0.50.
• Calendar (local organization): $20. Minimum price elsewhere: around $8 (assuming you don't count the extra cost as a charitable donation).
  
• Groceries (H-Mart): $39. Minimum price elsewhere: the same, since H-Mart has the best prices on all the items we bought.
• Jigsaw puzzles (thrift shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $40.
• Meds (Rite Aid): $17.99. Minimum price elsewhere: $19.99.

Total for everything we bought locally: $142.96. Minimum price to buy it all non-locally: $169.97. Amount we paid extra for shopping locally: negative $27.01. Yes, our local stores actually gave us better value than we could have found anywhere else.

So what's the takeaway here? Does it mean we're better off doing all our shopping locally from now on?

Well...no. It's true that, on the whole, I got better prices shopping in town on the stuff I was able to shop for in town. But there was lots of stuff I wasn't.

For instance, I got a gift certificate for Hanukkah to Better World Books, a site that's like the anti-Amazon. It serves as a platform for a huge network of local bookstores all over the country; when you buy books through the site, one of those local stores fills them. Buying through this site supports local businesses, but not our local businesses. Since there are no bookstores here in town, it's not even theoretically possible for any purchases I make with that gift certificate to benefit our local economy. But they're not taking business away from it, either, because buying the books in town isn't an option. It's just a purchase I have to make non-locally if I want to make it at all.

Similarly, my computer has been giving me some trouble lately. It just can't seem to handle the demands my work software puts on it, to the point that it takes two to three minutes to do something as simple as opening a file. Given that it's nearly ten years old, this is probably to be expected, but if I need to replace the thing, I can't do it locally. We have places in town that repair computers, but none that sell them.

And there are a few other things that are pretty much impossible to find locally. Shoes, for instance; I was lucky enough to be able to buy my last pair of winter boots in an actual store, but finding a pair that fits me at the thrift shop — the only store in town that sells footwear — would be too much to ask. Even finding clothing that fits me is a long shot.

So, no, I can't really start doing all my shopping in town. But what I can do, and probably should, is to shop in town first.

In other words, if there's something I need, or just want, I can make a point of trying the local businesses first. If I can't find it there, I can always go further afield. But if they do have it and it's just a bit more expensive, maybe I should just accept that as the price of doing business. Especially when I know there's a good chance that the next purchase I make locally will actually be cheaper here at home than anywhere else.

Can I actually pull this off? I don't know. But I think it's worth a try, at least.