I have been shopping here since I was a little kid. My grandma was the person who originally got me into thrifting and here is where we would go on Saturday or Sunday mornings. I loved being able to pick out my own clothes, searching through the aisles for best piece and for an awesome price.
As I have grown up and found out more about the organization and how it is actually run and its practices, it is not a place where I choose to spend a lot of my money at. However, I do still occasionally shop here and if you are just getting into thrifting it a great place to start. I recommend setting aside a few hours to sort through the racks, a bottle of water, a fully charged phone and a pair of headphones.
Here are my pros and cons of Goodwill:
Pros:
- Accessible- the one thing I enjoy about Goodwill is there are numerous locations that make them easy to shop at. One key thing to note about Goodwill is the clothes you find in each Goodwill usually reflect the area they’re in. For example Goodwill in a “rich” town/neighborhood=better name brand and labels.
- Selection- Goodwill typically has a wide selection of clothes and the one in Janesville even color codes and organizes them by size *not all Goodwills do this.
- Clean- I am beginning to see this is a trend of the thrift stores I choose to shop at, is that they are clean stores. There
is nothing grosser than finding a pair of dirty underwear amongst a pile of clothes. There just isn’t.
Cons:
Prices- Over the past couple of years, the prices have significantly increased. I am not saying in no way that they are more expensive than shopping fast fashion. However, for secondhand clothes they’re starting to get a bit steep.
The organization itself- I would love to say how wonderful they are but I can’t or at least I don’t know. There are conflicting articles about Goodwill especially in the last couple of years, unfortunately, I feel like the bad parts are easier to believe. *I may do a blog post diving deeper into this topic.
