It’s so gratifying when you’re out shopping and you find the perfect shirt, the coolest jacket, or that one appliance in the kitchen you’ve been wanting forever. You get the euphoric rush of discovery and you know you absolutely have to bring it home. If you’re living on a tight budget, often times you either keep walking or you take a peek at the price tag before cringing and walking away. I absolutely love how at thrift stores you generally don’t feel that, instead you feel even better because it’s a really awesome find and at a great price. Even better, the stores always seem to have rotating variety that you typically can’t find elsewhere and items that you always wanted but couldn’t afford when they were common in stores. The discoveries are always coming when you go to a thrift store.
About 2 ½ years ago when I moved to the Portland area, I was introduced to a store called Value Village, which is part of a chain of 300 stores worldwide and there are 3 locations in this area.
- 12060 SW Main
Tigard, OR 97223 - 7110 NE Fourth Plain Rd.
Vancouver, WA 97661 - 2460 Mission SE
Salem, OR 97302
Personally, I frequent the Tigard location due to close proximity to myself and I have increasingly grown fond of this location.
This is where my family and I go when we’re shopping for clothes. Primarily because there’s lots of variety for the whole family, for every season for almost every occasion it seems.
Trust me, for my family’s clothing shopping it’s typically an ordeal. My fiancé is a big guy, built much like a linebacker and we struggle a lot finding him clothes that fit and look good. My daughter is tall and thin and we struggle finding clothes that fit her comfortably and that she’s happy with. Here, we can typically find something for the big guy and if we can’t find much in the children’s section that my daughter likes and fits her, she gets to pick out a shirt or two from the adult section for us to take home and turn into dresses for her.There’s also some booths for you to try clothing on at that are relatively spacious for what they are.
Of course there’s much more than just clothing, but their clothing selection does take up most of their floor space. Just from a cursory glance at the store, it seems to be relatively split up into these different sections:
- Books/DVDs/VHS tapes/Records/Comics
- Appliances
- Household Decorations/Nick Nacks
- Shoes
- Furniture
- Toys
- Crafting/Sewing
- Bedding
- Jewelry
Despite this store being part of a corporate chain, I do enjoy this store greatly. The prices are better than Goodwill and despite the overall disarray of the store; I honestly believe that it had a better vibe in it. Everyone who works there seems relatively happy to be there, and I love that they’re allowed to have piercings and artificially colored hair. For me at least, it makes the environment seem more comfortable and inclusive. Now if you join their store club, they’ll let you know about sales before they happen and will even offer you special sales days before everyone else. This last trip when we went in there, we literally saved over $20 and spent only $13 for the following:
- Japanese coloring book
- Tinkerbell fairy wings
- Ironman Hulk Buster toy
- 3 envelopes of sewing patterns
- 2 shirts
- 1 women’s bolo jacket
- 1 tie
- XXXL leather jacket
With great selection and variety with good prices and sales, you can see why my family and I enjoy Value Village so much. Just look how happy this spawling is.
We’re always on the lookout for places with great discoveries and prices for those of frugal living, so go ahead and comment with your favorite thrift stores in the area and as we visit thrift stores throughout the Portland area, I’ll go ahead and review them here.
**EDIT: I noticed after the fact that I had somehow mistaken to entitle this post. I have now included a title. My sincerest apologies for this oversight. 1/20/16
Wenchlette Wanders 