Laid-Off? Open A Thrift Store!

With the news that there were just about 600,000 people in the US laid-off last month, I started thinking of ideas for new ways to make cash in a cash-strapped world.

When money gets tight, people will start recycling their stuff – donating and buying to and from places like GoodWill, selling off the antiques to the antique store, and putting the good stuff in a consignment store – all in hopes that their personal economy will get better soon.

Sometimes a bad economy means that you just have to get creative.

For example, I had a friend who made his living through having yard sales – every weekend. He started out by going around and collecting furniture and items that people put on the curb for the trash collector. Everything he found was still good stuff, just stuff that people got tired of. He got his friends to drop off their unwanted stuff. Then when he started making a living at it, he’d also go to garage sales to find stuff that people were basically giving away and he’d resell it. He started out in the yard, and then eventually got an inexpensive store front and stayed open five or six days a week.

There’s another store in our area, The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, that survives off of donations and resells stuff you would never think anyone would buy. Their target audience are teachers looking for things like yogurt containers or empty toilet paper rolls for art projects, but artists and creative people of all types use it. “Since the early ’80s, the Depot has been promoting solid waste diversion and resource conservation by collecting and redistributing reusable materials for education, arts & crafts, and a wide variety of other creative projects. The Depot also spreads the word about the importance of waste reduction, recycling, and reusable materials through a school-based environmental education curriculum.”

And then if you are lucky enough to live in a community with a thriving flea market, there is always that option too.

So there are a few examples of things you can do to get through hard times. You can basically start with nothing, turn your garage into a little boutique, and get the word out. If you don’t want to start it out alone, get a collective together. It’ll be good for the community and good for the planet.