I believe in shopping at thrift stores whenever possible. Some of my nicest and most favorite outfits have come from them--including my best professional garb and also my wedding dress, which I wouldn't have traded for the price of a Lamborghini. It was perfect, I...
Read MoreI believe in shopping at thrift stores whenever possible. Some of my nicest and most favorite outfits have come from them--including my best professional garb and also my wedding dress, which I wouldn't have traded for the price of a Lamborghini. It was perfect, I loved it, and I could not even imagine one that I'd have loved any better. (Pro tip: Change the buttons, and a thrift-store jacket can look like a jacket that you'd love to know which designer it came from. But I didn't see a need to do that with my wedding dress.)
We've had good experiences with Goodwill stores in general, but the one in Culpeper is really special. Their people work so hard to keep the store stock looking nice. If you go there to look at clothing, you will find the racks sorted very neatly by color, within each size range! All of the shelves are neat--not a bit of mess in the place. Glassware is extremely affordable, and I've found some treasures. Everything else is extremely affordable, too. People clearly work hard to keep this store so clean and well-organized, and I really appreciate it. If you are looking at small appliances or computer peripherals, you will find that there is even a table with an electrical outlet available, so that you can make sure the device works as designed.
And then there's this. Recently, a family member mistakenly dropped off, as a donation, a bag of my personal belongings instead of the adjacent bag labeled "Goodwill." I was as upset as you might imagine. Let's just say that the week went south at that point. I'm a Southerner, but even so, the week "going south" is not a good thing.
I found out a little more than an hour after the dropoff. The store personnel really cared. They'd had a shift change, and apparently they move things onto the floor pretty fast. But ... as I say, they cared. They called an employee who'd been on duty at the time of the dropoff, and who might have handled some of the items. He came back to work on his own time to try to find them for me. He found some of them--the ones that counted. The other stuff didn't matter. I was a complete wreck, but at the same time, it would've been kinda hard not to feel the love. I had an entire store's staff worth of people who clearly cared about my distress, and a man who came back to work after hours, on his own time, just on the chance that he might be able to help me out.
These are good folks. I am very grateful to them for the care they take in keeping the store so nice, but I am even more grateful to them for the caring that they showed me on a human level.
Please do shop--and donate--here, if you have the chance. Everything is clean and really nice, the prices are very affordable, and staff members have never been anything less than lovely to deal with. I've enjoyed talking with every one of them with whom I've interacted.
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