On The Usefulness Of Second-hand Stores

In our city we have a couple of second-hand shops, where you can buy all sorts of things, such as books, furniture, clothes and even bicycles and computers. As life gets more expensive, the amount of their customers keeps growing. Being somewhat of a miser  model housewife, I keep visiting them hunting chiefly for old books. With years, I have collected quite a library and I seldom pay more than 1 euro for a book. There is always an element of a thrill because one never knows what literary masterpiece he can come across.

Some of the furniture in our house also comes from a second-hand store, for instance, this cabinet:

It's made of  high quality solid oak, but was quite inexpensive.


I'm rather prejudiced against buying second-hand clothes, mostly due to my husband's opinion on this matter, but I will make an exception if I find some quality item. Only this week I went on a treasure hunt and dug out this cute little skirt which I was wearing today while performing my housewifely duty:

Nice clothes don't have to cost you a fortune! My relationship with the second-hand shops tends to be reciprocal as through the years I also donated some things there. Though I'm not an environmentalist, something definitely can be said in defence of re-using and recycling, if only from the point of view of saving money.

If you accumulated some unnecessary stuff such as books, DVDs, clothes, children's toys etc etc think twice before throwing them away. If there is no second-hand store nearby, you may have a friend who will be happy to get them. Nowadays people are always busy with donating to charities overseas, some of which are actually quite phony (how comes that the CEOs of those charities all earn  six-figure salaries?), but I believe that charity begins at home.