Giving up on charity shop shopping!

[Notcontent]

I have always bought a large proportion of my clothes second hand. When I was a teenager (not in the U.K.) it was largely due to financial reasons. This was before second hand became cool. Anyway, the habit stayed with me and over the years, living in London, my wardrobe has been a mix of second hand (80% I would say), basics from places like Uniqlo and the occasional more expensive new item.

But in the last couple of years or so I have increasingly found very little worth buying in my local charity shops. There are fewer nice things (being sold online maybe?) and what is there is really expensive. Today I had a good look and there were gems like a shrunken Uniqlo jumper for £17 and lots of similar things.

It’s a lot selling online and also that the quality of clothes has dropped.

Have you tried eBay or vinted? Also FB marketplace in some areas. Also worth checking if there’s a well off area near you that still has good second hand stuff - lots of people can’t be arsed to sell so they still drop stuff off but people grab it and sell it so you have to drop by more regularly than you once did.

I've noticed a lot of Shein and Primark in charity shops. It's a consequence of so much fast fashion I suppose.
One Oxfam near me gets new M&S stuff sometimes so I check in there regularly.

Don’t underestimate areas where you think there won’t be good labels. I got a silk Whistles blouse last weekend in an area that is considered to be economically disadvantaged and have gotten good labels in the same area at really good prices.

Where do you live? I find charity shops tend to be worse in the city centres

I bought a new, leather, cross-body bag for £2 last week. I bought a lovely M&S cord Jean jacket in Dec. Stuff is still out there, but there is a lot of cheap, poorly made fast fashion to wade through.

Try Vinted - loads of good stuff on there.

I went to 2 charity shops yesterday. Got a coat, jacket and a dress for £9.
They are from well known brands, often mentioned in Style & Beauty.
The shops are in a fairly rough town.
I find things by going through everything. Rails of Shein, Primark etc will often have something wonderful hidden there.

Yeah I've shifted to Vinted to be honest - our local chazzas are full of Primark tat - occasionally you see something nice but it's a size 6. I follow Fabfatand40plus on insta and she is always finding lovely stuff in her charity shops. I don't know where she is - think it's Home Counties somewhere- but my grotty zone 3 south London enclave has nowt! Ever!

Too many people know how to sell their unwanted but good quality and good condition clothes online - so it’s the tat that gets given to charity shops that they think they can’t be arsed putting the time in to get only a couple of quid - or you get lucky and get in an area with wealthy people who need the wardrobe space but not the cash so value their time too highly to sell online.

sadly vinted have made it so much quicker and easier to sell that more people are making the effort.

Get to know your local charity shops ... I manage a charity shop, have lots of regular customers - I don't 'save' stock for them but I always point out things I know they will like ... I have a very loyal following.

We are very selective in what we put out for sale ... and my sales are up on last year so clearly I am doing something right . Lots of charity shops now have arrangements with mainstream retailers so you will find a lot of new, branded items.

I love charity shops too and have bought a lot of my clothes and clothes for my son second hand.
I agree it depends on the shop. You get to know the ones that have better quality stuff.
But part of the "fun" if you like, is having a good rummage to see what you can find.

Some of them have become expensive but there are still bargains to be found.

I also am a bit of a Vinted convert and have found some lovely bits on there. You can search by size and brand and colour etc and find what you're looking for.

My local charity shop is a bit hit, and miss, usually miss. But saying that I managed to find a 100% cashmere cardigan for £3.50 the other day.😃

Still loads of great stuff in our local charity shops (affluent market town). However it’s not priced cheaply so I’ve stopped shopping in them as much as it was really adding up & I was ending up with lots of “bargains” that I neither loved nor wore!!

I have 3 that I regularly go to, one that is relatively cheap but good quality, one that has school uniforms and one that is reasonable for fabric and things but expensive for clothes. I still donate to the different one that’s values align mostly with mine and is easier to drop off donations and will have a look through then.

I also live in a "deprived" area of London. My local Cancer Research receieve a lot of stock from the Marylebone branch and sell a lot of amazing brands for £3-£5.

In the past few months I've picked up items which look brand new including a womans Jigsaw wool blazer, a men's shirt which retails £120 for £4, a boys Ralph Lauren hoodie.....

I think a lot of stuff is sold on Vinted, eBay etc. If you want to support charities and don’t mind buying online then Thrift + is good.

I think there are gems out there but a lot of it is just cheap mass produced crap - fast fashion produces so much that it’s also a numbers thing, millions of cheap items being produced and small numbers of better quality things. So a lot of rubbish to sort through to find anything decent.

I used to work with a lady whose work wardrobe was almost exclusively a cashmere cardigan and a pair of cords in the same colour. She had several "sets". Turned out they were from a charity shop. I would love to have met the woman who was regularly giving them away!

You are looking in the wrong place, or possibly on the wrong day, I volunteer at one and we get amazing donations but we don't steam on Saturdays so no new stock after 1pm Fridays- the best stock tends to sell within a couple of hours

Near us they are full of tat...often have a 99p item event, and its all total rubbish, torn, shrunk,tatty...useless stuff....or the other one has shocking prices...£300 for a pair of worn out old gucci sneakers....!!
Surbiton has some good ones....always worth a visit, good quality stuff and fair prices. Trendy areas are too expensive, camden, hackney etc.

Agreed, I also just shop on Vinted now really. A small cross body bag in my local charity shop was £15 (a brand called V&M London - I've never heard of them might be designer for all I know, it was a fabric bag so not leather or anything). It was in good condition to be fair but too much for an impulse buy. I suspect that people can't afford to buy as much / more quality things in the first place now hence a lot of Primark or what have you being donated, plus selling the better stuff online (some charities sell clothes on eBay too I've noticed, gets it to a wider audience I guess). I'm a bit sad about it really I used to love having a good rummage and finding a gem that I couldn't afford or justify as new!

I think that university towns and cities are worth a look as that’s what I attribute some of my better bargains to ( Maje cardigan and Longchamp le plaige ( brand new) for example) and especially if there is a high international student population)

I still look sometimes but I can’t understand why they’re so expensive but have so much stock that they often make people feel guilty for taking in donations!

Vinted is great…..I’ve had a few issues with two parcels being left in my neighbour’s garden and lockers not having space so an item was delayed for weeks. Everything has turned up eventually but I now always choose home delivery.

I think too, where I live anyway, a lot of people I know are using things like Freecycle or those free to a good home Facebook pages more to give away items. More convenient as you can just leave a bag of items by the front door instead of lugging bin bags to the town centre charity shops.

My local charity shops are pretty cheap but so much Primark!

You just have to go in frequently, and hope to get lucky. I visit one shop weekly: nothing for a month, then today a new coat and jeans for my DD. One of the others in our town gets new, unsold Zara with the labels marked, so always worth a look. I'm in the south east, and prices are still reasonable (jeans £5 & under, coats £5-20, tops under a fiver).
I, too, buy a lot off Vinted, especially for the kids: now they're over 10, there's very little in the charity shops that fits them

It's the COL. People realised there's value in their old clothes and they need every penny to help pay the bills!

Perhaps it depends on the town, as others say. I am in Brighton and Hove & buy a lot of my wardrobe in charity shops. Second hand is big here though. Agree that prices have gone up and the city centre ones rarely have much in or it's very expensive, as a pp said. I go to the high street in Hove or the more 'bohemian' end of Brighton and usually find decent things each time 😊