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Do you know what to do when you bring clothes home from the thrift store? Whether you’re buying secondhand from thrift stores or estate sales, grabbing garments from Buy Nothing or the free thrift store, or even getting hand me downs from family and friends, this is a great process to adopt.
Step One: Try On
Lots of thrift stores where I live don’t have dressing rooms, and if you’re shopping estate sales you won’t necessarily have a chance to try things on before you bring them home.
Just because something says it is the size you expect to want to wear, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t shrunk or stretched or that you’ll actually like the look of it when you try it on.
So that’s the first thing to do when you bring clothes home: try them on. Even if you tried them on at the store. Give yourself time to explore how you look and feel in the garments and whether you really want them.
If you shopped at the thrift store or got them for free, it’s easy to donate them again if you end up not liking something. And if you do this fast if you bought from a regular shop or some thrift stores you may be able to return the item if you have regrets.
Step Two: Wash
Yes even if you got the items from someone you know, and especially if you bought something new (or new with tags from the thrift store).
New garments can have sizing and finishing sprays on them that you don’t want on your body. Secondhand clothes often have that thrift store funk, but even if you get them from someone you know, you don’t know how long they were sitting in a box or bag waiting to be passed along.
I am a firm believer in breaking laundry rules (especially around dry clean only, but sometimes hand wash, too) but I often hand wash new-to-me clothes the first time, unless I have enough things to run a load of just “new” things in the washing machine.
Washing things also gives you a chance to see if the colors run and it can help you observe things that need extra attention, which brings me to the next thing you should do when you bring clothes home from the thrift store.
My tips for how to wash sweaters are a good place to start if you want to hand wash your items.
Step Three: Mending and Maintenance
I recently bought a big linen shirt at an estate sale and I didn’t realize until I got it home that it had a bunch of pulls in it. (See my post on how to fix a snag in clothing if that’s a problem you also need to deal with, on old clothes or new).
It was also missing a button on the sleeve, and has one button that feels pretty loose.
I ended up taking the top button off the shirt (because I’m never going to button it that high anyway) to replace the one missing on the cuff, and re-sewed the loose one so it wouldn’t fall off.
Now’s a great time to deal with any tears or holes and to treat or cover up stains if you have any you didn’t notice before (ideally you’d treat any stains you saw before you washed the garment then, but things always manage to slip through).
Step Four: Alterations
This is not always going to be necessary when you bring clothes home from the thrift store, but sometimes we buy clothes that don’t fit as well as we would like. Now is the time to take care of it rather than wearing something that annoys you (or not wearing it when you could have just fixed it).
This category can include a lot of things. Sometimes we deliberately buy something that’s too big and it’s just a matter of taking in the side seams or hemming the item for a better fit.
It might be you need to make a shirt a little longer or wider or you want to take off the sleeves. Or you notice a sweat stain you didn’t see before and decide to turn the t-shirt into a tank top.
The same shirt I’ve been talking about has some stains that might be from bleach. I haven’t decided what I want to do, if anything, to deal with them. I might cut off the bottom of the shirt (it’s basically dress length on me as is) or I could dye the fabric or do something else. It’s not stopping me from wearing it so I don’t have to decide right away.
Whatever you need to do, it’s better to do it before you add the item to your rotation, or hang it in your closet never to be seen again until you decide to donate it.
Do you have anything you like to do when you bring clothes home from the thrift store? I’d love to hear about it!
