Too proud to go to a thrift store? Here my story.
itzcath
Posts: 94 Member
Before I started keto I was known for wearing one thing... BLACK. Every single stinking thing in my closet was a tribute to Johnny Cash. Then there was my one drawer of pants, stretchy pants, all 20 of them exactly the same. When I lost 40 pounds all my Johnny Cash fashions were swimming on me so I decided to venture into a thrift store. There was NO WAY I was going to spend a fortune on new clothes half way through my weight loss journey.
It was a really, really hard thing to do for me, going to the thrift store. Let me tell you why.
My mother was a lifelong extreme hoarder and frequented thrift stores my entire life. My earliest memories of a thrift store was mom dumping the contents of her purse in the car, jamming a ruler in her purse make it look full and then taking us kids in the store with her to be distraction to the clerk so she could steal used clothes. That was in the beginning until she discovered open dumps and dumpster diving.
In my lifetime I was always given gifts for my birthday and Xmas from the thrift store. Never, ever anything new.
40 years later, in 2015 my mother was diagnosed with complicated dementia and OCD. I ended up dealing with her estate. It took 7 months of my life away, something I always dreaded and knew was coming, but it didn't make things any easier. It was the most horriffic experience in my life and I came very near to losing myself in the midst of it.
During the early stage of cleanup I had a mental breakdown. About 3 weeks into the cleanup I was clearing my childhood bedroom when I became trapped in that room by falling debris. It was stack of loose toilet paper piled high to the ceiling behind the door and it was completely encrusted in mouse droppings. When it came tumbling down on me the door slammed shut, there was nowhere for me move, the entire room was packed solid. I could here myself breathing heavily with the respirator, the noise from my breathing sounded like Darth Vader.The mask was fogging up from my heavy breathing, now I couldn't see very well either ... when I reached for the handle to open the door, all I could see through the fog of my breath on the respirator was the drywall where the mice had chewed. All...those...tiny teeth marks in a semi circle RIGHT beside the handle. It was like at some time they too had been trapped in that room desperately trying to escape. Maybe it was the dead, stinking, rotting, bloated mouse body i found in a trap only moments before?
That's when I completely lost it. I was pretty much convinced at that particular moment in time we were all going to die trying to clean up that house. When I finally got myself out of that room all work stopped and I spent the rest of the day in a nice concrete room at the hospital. A week later I was back at it. It had to get done and I wasn't going to pay a hazmat team to do it. That was when I found a petrified, dead so long it was as flat as a potatoe chip deer-mouse carcass clearing the kitchen... Nice, i'm thinking, people DIE from disease spread by deer-mouse droppings. At that point I figured we were all going to die and it was too late anyway so I just pitched the dead carcass in a bin and carried on.
I spent my vacation that summer clearing junk. Specifically mom's bedroom. We filled a 40 yard bin with her clothes alone... 3 tons of clothes covered in mouse feces.
70 TONS of garbage (the equivalent weight of 2 adult whales) and 7 months later mom passed away. 3 days before she died we had just finished gutting the property. You could no longer smell the house from over a block away. My mother was both physically and chemically restrained for her entire 7 month stay at the hospital until she basically starved to death and died. There is absolutely No-where to place complicated dementia patients, and I mean nowhere.. our health Care system we have here in Canada is horrible, just horrible... but that's another story.
I have probably replaced my entire wardrobe for less than 500 dollars at the thrift store and A co-worker of mine that worked at a designer clothing manufacturer in Montreal is constantly blown away at the beautiful design name clothes that i find (she really has an eye for quality but I really don't have a clue about designer anything with my up bringing).
I no longer fear patterns and colors.
Animal prints are my friends.
I wore a skirt for the first time in 30 years to work last week and felt like an actual girl.
I am no longer invisible and get compliments from complete strangers.
I recently realized that the mere mention of going to a thrift store completely mortifies most people, and admittedly i used to be one of them (for good reason).
If I can darken the doorstep of a thrift store after what I have spent a lifetime enduring, I believe anyone can.
If your too proud to go to a thrift store for whatever the reason remember my story. Aside from buying clothes at a fraction of the price trust me when I say you don't know what your missing!
It was a really, really hard thing to do for me, going to the thrift store. Let me tell you why.
My mother was a lifelong extreme hoarder and frequented thrift stores my entire life. My earliest memories of a thrift store was mom dumping the contents of her purse in the car, jamming a ruler in her purse make it look full and then taking us kids in the store with her to be distraction to the clerk so she could steal used clothes. That was in the beginning until she discovered open dumps and dumpster diving.
In my lifetime I was always given gifts for my birthday and Xmas from the thrift store. Never, ever anything new.
40 years later, in 2015 my mother was diagnosed with complicated dementia and OCD. I ended up dealing with her estate. It took 7 months of my life away, something I always dreaded and knew was coming, but it didn't make things any easier. It was the most horriffic experience in my life and I came very near to losing myself in the midst of it.
During the early stage of cleanup I had a mental breakdown. About 3 weeks into the cleanup I was clearing my childhood bedroom when I became trapped in that room by falling debris. It was stack of loose toilet paper piled high to the ceiling behind the door and it was completely encrusted in mouse droppings. When it came tumbling down on me the door slammed shut, there was nowhere for me move, the entire room was packed solid. I could here myself breathing heavily with the respirator, the noise from my breathing sounded like Darth Vader.The mask was fogging up from my heavy breathing, now I couldn't see very well either ... when I reached for the handle to open the door, all I could see through the fog of my breath on the respirator was the drywall where the mice had chewed. All...those...tiny teeth marks in a semi circle RIGHT beside the handle. It was like at some time they too had been trapped in that room desperately trying to escape. Maybe it was the dead, stinking, rotting, bloated mouse body i found in a trap only moments before?
That's when I completely lost it. I was pretty much convinced at that particular moment in time we were all going to die trying to clean up that house. When I finally got myself out of that room all work stopped and I spent the rest of the day in a nice concrete room at the hospital. A week later I was back at it. It had to get done and I wasn't going to pay a hazmat team to do it. That was when I found a petrified, dead so long it was as flat as a potatoe chip deer-mouse carcass clearing the kitchen... Nice, i'm thinking, people DIE from disease spread by deer-mouse droppings. At that point I figured we were all going to die and it was too late anyway so I just pitched the dead carcass in a bin and carried on.
I spent my vacation that summer clearing junk. Specifically mom's bedroom. We filled a 40 yard bin with her clothes alone... 3 tons of clothes covered in mouse feces.
70 TONS of garbage (the equivalent weight of 2 adult whales) and 7 months later mom passed away. 3 days before she died we had just finished gutting the property. You could no longer smell the house from over a block away. My mother was both physically and chemically restrained for her entire 7 month stay at the hospital until she basically starved to death and died. There is absolutely No-where to place complicated dementia patients, and I mean nowhere.. our health Care system we have here in Canada is horrible, just horrible... but that's another story.
I have probably replaced my entire wardrobe for less than 500 dollars at the thrift store and A co-worker of mine that worked at a designer clothing manufacturer in Montreal is constantly blown away at the beautiful design name clothes that i find (she really has an eye for quality but I really don't have a clue about designer anything with my up bringing).
I no longer fear patterns and colors.
Animal prints are my friends.
I wore a skirt for the first time in 30 years to work last week and felt like an actual girl.
I am no longer invisible and get compliments from complete strangers.
I recently realized that the mere mention of going to a thrift store completely mortifies most people, and admittedly i used to be one of them (for good reason).
If I can darken the doorstep of a thrift store after what I have spent a lifetime enduring, I believe anyone can.
If your too proud to go to a thrift store for whatever the reason remember my story. Aside from buying clothes at a fraction of the price trust me when I say you don't know what your missing!
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Replies
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Wow, what a story, well done for coming through all of that.3
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I have no words...
But I agree thrift stores are a great way to get perfectly good clothes at a good price.4 -
Oh @itzcath I know what you are talking about and trust me I understand , my husband's mother and father were the same way , when she died , His father gave us boxes of bottled food (pickles and such) and All of it was bad . Then 2 years later we had to move him out of the house , because he had no water or electric . He was with us 8 months before he passed away . The house we sold to a guy who buys cheap houses and cleans them up .Now as long as they were alive they refused to let us clean up the house . So we had to wait . Nothing I have ever seen was that bad as their home .
Thrift stores , love them . my son is growing a inch a week I think LOL and my daughter just loves to look (she is disabled ) the books she loves .
and way to go for losing 40 pounds . I am so happy for you .
you have been through so much , be proud of yourself , you are so strong !!!1 -
Wow. (hugs) what a brave thing to share.... An amazing NSV.4
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Thanks for sharing.
I have always loved thrift shops. Most of my clothes came from them when I was growing up. Only my grandmother gave me new clothes. I'm short and don't sew, I learned they are the treasure trove of style and fit.1 -
After living in the same starter house for 37 years my wife and I have started taking one or two areas a year and going top to bottom de-cluttering. This year we moved the kitchen to another room which forced us to go through each cabinet and decide if it is worth the effort to move or toss. Just trying to avoid being a burden in later years. I do feel like older adults who grew up during the depression are more susceptible to hoarding.5
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There's a Facebook page for families of hoarders that's very helpful. Everyone there understands.3
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After living in the same starter house for 37 years my wife and I have started taking one or two areas a year and going top to bottom de-cluttering. This year we moved the kitchen to another room which forced us to go through each cabinet and decide if it is worth the effort to move or toss. Just trying to avoid being a burden in later years. I do feel like older adults who grew up during the depression are more susceptible to hoarding.
I agree that adults who went through deprivation and war are more likely to hoard or at least collect way too much stuff. I'm clearing my parents house, workshop, and sheds right now, three months worth of work.2 -
My Mom used to make me and my sister do "Spring cleaning" every year and it's something that has stuck with me into adulthood but I tend to do "Spring and Fall cleaning". This is my opportunity to go through my closets and donate items like clothing and things I no longer use. After losing weight I donated a lot of clothing and plan on doing so again this Fall. I look at it this way if I haven't worn it in the past couple of years I am probably not going to wear it anytime in the future so maybe it will help someone else. I don't buy as many clothes at thrift stores these days but I do hit them up for glassware, frames, stretcher bars, art supplies, books, cds, and other knick knacks.
Sorry you had to go through all that with your Mom. Thrift stores are a great way to recycle I've found some awesome items in them and I am pretty sure I've donated items that have made someone's day.2
