'Clothes are cheap these days, no need for second hand'

[Upsidedownandinsideout]

Just read this exact phrase on a current thread re FB selling groups but see it again and again on here.

Am no saint, I still buy things from Zara as well as preowned, and haven't darned a sock in my life. Still I worry that if even the members here, who generally work hard to do the best for our kids and worry about their futures, think nothing of buying new school trousers every growth spurt instead of taking up or down, or buy a new costume (flown from China) every year for World Book Day, or can't see the point in bothering to sell a second hand item - that's not a great sign for the future of our environment, especially when our fast fashion industry means that there increasingly isn't much value in donated clothes either.

Realistically though, AIBU to even spend time worrying about this? I feel like a (small, full-time-working and time- and money-poor) drop in a very large ocean every time I think about these things.

there's a world of a difference between enjoying rummaging around a charity shop and having to buy 2nd hand in order to clothe your family

You don't need to go to charity shops to clothe your family cheaply though. I buy most online, eBay and FB selling groups. Search for the brands you like and write a post saying what you're after eg 'in search of girls summer clothes age 3-4, excellent condition, no pink please'. People will show you what they have, you choose individual items or bundles. Or scroll through the selling posts in the size you want.

I'm very fussy about DD's clothes. They must be good quality, bright, comfortable, preferably organic cotton or natural fibres like merino wool. Adjustable waists and cuffed bottoms to get maximum use. I rarely find anything in charity shops but buy lots online.
Scandi has great resell value. I bought her winter coat in October for £15 and sold it for £13 last month when she outgrew it. So a coat for £2! I've bought merino leggings, thermals, alpaca knitwear and the softest cotton tops for less than I would spend getting synthetic versions in Next or Debenhams. I don't mind sewing up the odd hole. I buy lots in advance, so she has things to grow into.

Our society is very materialistic. People want cheap clothes but they want it all brand new, they want it all conveniently under one roof, they want aisle upon aisle of choice. Then next season they want new clothes again, so most of it ends up in landfill because it's bobbled and shapeless and nobody else wants it. Fast fashion is very fickle and wasteful. The media is constantly promoting 'get a new look' and people are falling for it, so the sweatshops keep churning out more.

I do not live in an affluent area so would not bother looking in my local charity shops as I doubt there would be anything of my taste.

You need to start looking, I don't live in an affluent area either but our local charity shops have lots of designer brands; many of the big fashion names have 'corporate links' with charities to dispose of their unsold items in an 'ethical manner' - so Ted Baker, Boden etc will be donating end of season brand new clothing to various charities, it obviously pays to know which ones .

Apart from the odd T shirt he gets for birthday/Christmas, DS wears all Boden - and it's all bought on eBay. I then pass it onto a friend with younger DS or give to charity.

My clothes are mostly from eBay too, and they get taken to charity shops when I've finished with them.

I think shoes are the only item of clothing that I buy new for both of us.

Aside from socks and pants all my kids have been kitted out in second hand school uniform, hand me downs from their cousins. Leaves me able to get them decent shoes and coats and i dont worry about things getting grubby. I shop smart in the sales for myself buying the best quality i can get. My work trousers for example have lasted 15 years and still life in them

I spent a lot of my childhood in charity shop clothes they were just awful however my dp didn’t have a lot at the time but I was ashamed, I longed for something I picked out that was new. I got an evening job when I was 15 waitressing and it was amazing feeling been able to go out and choose an outfit I liked rather than someone else’s clothes

Times have changed though. When I was a child, shopping in charity shops was done furtively, people were ashamed to be seen in them!
Nowadays it's associated with being ethically responsible, like recycling. Many women in the buy/sell groups I'm in are mums of young children, who take care of clothes so they can be sold on and enjoyed by others. Secondhand cloth nappies, ethically sourced wooden toys and baby wearing gear come up for sale a lot. They're the people promoting mooncups, cloth breast pads, eco eggs and reusable sandwich wraps.

Buying secondhand clothes online is so popular now you have a vast variety of styles, brands and sizes to choose from. It just takes a bit longer than grabbing clothes during your grocery shop.

many of the big fashion names have 'corporate links' with charities to dispose of their unsold items in an 'ethical manner

This is certainly true in the shop I volunteer in. It can be very hit and miss though. The stuff we get is generally the things which haven't sold in the shops, because they are either horrendous, a size 4 or a size 26. We get very little in size 10, 12, 14 or 16. Same with shoes, great for people who are a dainty size 2 or a size 8 or more, very little in the more popular sizes. Also the stock is never in season - we had boxes last week filled with summer stuff which I suppose was last year's. Doesn't bother me but those cold shoulder tops are very 2017...

No I don't think thonk you're being unreasonable. However so many hightstreet clothes seem very overpriced for what they are and lose value as soon as they're off the clothes peg!

I put nearly all the clothes my kids grow out of into bags for the charity shop or to people I know with younger children. I have one boy one girl so they rarely hand down to each other but most of my sons clothes come from his older cousin. I then buy a “Sunday best” outfit for him brand new. My daughter we get less secondhand but do manage a few charity shop gems. Most of our furniture has been secondhand, our TVs were both secondhand, dishwasher and fridge freezer both secondhand etc. We try as not only is it better for society and the planet as a whole but usually it’s cheaper so saves money for us.

The amount of clothing that is purchased these days for both children and adults is to me appalling. Going into those cheap clothing stores I wonder why they bother to unload the container ship why not just let folk rummage in the ship for their must have latest buy. Some females won't go out even to a pub unless they have a new piece of clothing to wear. At the other end there is the landfill problem. Where do all the shoes, handbags go never mind all the stuff bought to make our hair look and stay luxurious. We are all so gullible or, have too much money to waste.

As a povo I buy second hand more often than new, but when I do buy new I nearly always regret it, because what I can afford to buy new is cheap, doesn't last and then there's the whole ethics of it, which upset me.

When I buy second hand, I can get far better quality and get things I want but can't afford. So this week I am waiting for my second hand Adidas Gazelles to turn up, which I'm ridiculously excited about. Today and tomorrow and maybe all week, I'll be wearing a pair of Clark's lace up ankle boots that have fleeced lining. About ten years ago I won a voucher from them on Facebook and bought the boots that were around £60 I think. I wear them a lot and they still have shed loads of life left in them. I have beautiful desert boots that I got in a Clark's sale over twenty years ago and they're still doing well.

If/when you really can't afford good quality clothing, etc, then buying them second hand is a great way to get things that will last ages and be worth so much more than you paid for them.

I think even if I was suddenly much better off I'd still shop in charity shops and eBay and the like, because I love a bargain!

I hate this throw-away society, and it’s now reaching into other things too. There are more divorces, step families, half families, single parents and blended families, overflowing landfills, dead wildlife, and unwanted pets than ever, and I can’t help but think that being a throw-away society is the cause.

I happily buy second hand clothes from charity shops, and donate stuff.

You think divorce is symptomatic of a throwaway society? Really?

Would you like to rephrase that, FaveNumber? No wildlife were harmed in the course of my divorce, I assure you.

I get her point though. Everything is so instant. Don't like it? Throw it away.
When I was young my grandma would darn our socks and reheel our boots. School shoes lasted a whole year.
People get bored so quickly now. Don't like the haircut? Get extensions, no need to grow it back. Don't like university? Quit. Treat yourself? Go and buy new clothes which have been made by children in 3rd world countries, then chuck them into landfill after wearing them once.
Nobody has respect anymore. And yes, I believe that does spill over into other aspects of life. People don't work at marriage like they used to. That is in part good, since women are free to be happy and not rely on a crap husband. But all of this moving on so quickly finding instant happiness in buying crap, changing relationships, discarding pets you can't be arsed with, blocking people on FB who have pissed you off....it goes on.
There are no real connections, only consumerism and stuff. And we are drowning, our planet is drowning, under plastic tat and old electronics, and tacky cheap clothes which we don't even need as there are many, good quality existing things which are useful.
But no one wants useful anymore. They want shiny, or fluffy, or bright, or cool, or....
Then the next thing is out.
It is tragic, when you think about it.

We are in a consumer society because it gives people jobs. If we don’t buy. Less tax and fewer jobs. I feel the only way to fix it is to slow down the growth of the world population. It’s tricky because nobody wants to be told how many children they should have. China insisting one child was a disaster.

A family member of ours works in a charity shop and she picks up some absolute gems for our DD for absolutely nothing. I love it!! I pass on a lot of the good clothes my daughter has grown out of on to my friend and she passes them on again when she has finished with them

We are in a consumer society because people keep watching shitty Tesco ads and buying their shite.
We don't need Easter presents, Christmas eve boxes, elf on a shelf, other seasonal bollocks which is always plastic cheap tatty shite, discarded after a day. One decent toy is worth a hundred piles of crap plastic. But it doesn't look good on the FB 'my kidz r my life we r blessed' pages.
Honestly we are vomiting onto our own planet.
If consumerism makes jobs then why is half the stuff we buy from China? We need jobs in butchers, bakers, dairies. We need to source and buy good quality home grown, not some random mince from an unknown animal from the supermarket.
I would rather pay more tax and have quality stuff and a future for my kids, who are going to have worse living conditions because of selfish parents too thick to realise that the way they are behaving is ruining the planet and cutting human life short. The inability to see beyond today is bloody ridiculous. The wastefulness in this country requires serious public intervention. But no, because then the bosses and bankers wouldn't make profits and get their third homes in Marbella.
It's like recycling. The ones who do, do. Those that don't, like my neighbour, put dog shit in their brown bin and don't give a fuck because once it's empty the bagged up shite next to the bin will also go into its place.
We will see what we have done to the world, only when it is too late to save it. And people will look on in horror, while a few say 'we told you, but you wouldn't listen'.

I just bought a bundle of 20 clothes for my 2 month old on eBay... £2.20 + £2.90 p&p.
Next, M&S and John Lewis... barely worn, very good quality. Would have been at least £50 new.

Well said starlight. I wish more people would free themselves from completely needless consumerism, and that’s coming from someone who used to love buying clothes. I’ve drastically reduced how much shopping I do over the last few years. All this stuff and tech doesn’t make you happy or change your life. The needless tech!! FFS. I just don’t get it. Alexa?! New phones constantly? All of that shit will end up in landfill in a few years time.

I often see people enthusing about charity shops, and talking about the lovely, quality / designer clothes they have picked up for pennies. I look through our local ones from time to time ( affluent area) and I never see these lovely gems. They are largely stocked with mid range clothing like M+S, and it is not dramatically cheaper than new. Eg £12 for a jumper that would be £25 new. I saw a dress from Tesco for £5 ( with sweat marks) and I had bought the same one new in Tesco for £8. dD's teacher suggested trawling the charity shops for items when I complained about one of these bloody dressing up days, and I found the thing I was looking for but twice the price of a new one off Amazon. People who buy lovely things in charity shops - do you spend hours hunting through crap for every great find? Or do particular shops have better stuff than others?

I love a good mooch in charity shops - and that's just as well, as the budget in the Tin household is rather tight at the moment.
We live in a small market town with a lot of charity and second hand shops, so the choice is good. This week I found a Boden T-shirt and trousers at £2.25 for both. They were in excellent condition (just needed the inevitable aroma washing out), and will happily sit in the loft with the rest of the pre-bought bargains until they are grown into.
Tin family get decent quality clothes that will last for years (and once mine are too tatty for wearing in public, they get relegated to housework/gardening duties) and don't blow the budget; environmental impact is dramatically reduced; and good causes get our hard-earned money, not massive companies. What's not to like?

I occasionally look at op shops
But when its the same price as i can pay new of course i will buy new, im a hard to fit size and rarely see my size in op shops anyway
I was also that picked on kid who only had second hand, it sucked, i wont put dd in that position.
Thats not to say we dont have 2nd hand stuff but it must be essentially near new, whcih rare in local opshops here

People can give their tut tut, think of the 3rd world. So ah are you posting from an iphone or the like? Yes? Shut up then

Virtually everything in my wardrobe is vintage, as in I bought it 20 plus years ago. I hate shopping. The mirrors, lights, pain of taking clothes off and on again. Online is worse, nothing fits as it should or looks like it should. And then you have the hassle of sending back.

I never buy second hand clothes as they generally have a funny smell to them. Also, I find that a lot of (even quite expensive clothes) look tired quite quickly and even get holes. My DC have s lot of Boden/Joules and often are not fit to pass on.