A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
You re-watch 'Napoleon Dynamite', and there's a lot of thrift shopping that goes on in that movie; there's a lot of funny stuff. It's definitely amusing, and paying 99 cents for a samurai sword is amazing.
As a kid, I loved going to lots of thrift stores with my parents. There was a period where I thought it was embarrassing, and then I started to get older - I realized they were really cool.
I did a lot of thrift and vintage. I would mix those pieces into some of the more inexpensive items from Express, Gap, Old Navy, and Clothestime.
I have been blessed with friends who do things rather than buy things: friends who will change books at the library, take a bag of your old clothes to a thrift store, bring you cuttings and plant them in a window box, fill the bird feeder in your garden when you can't get out.
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
I like to find the beauty in the ugly. When I'm in a thrift store, I gravitate toward pieces I know I'll wear a ton, and insane pieces that I'm sure most people would consider gross. But I find them inspiring. Our van is currently stocked with some of my random findings from this tour. Maybe I'll call my aesthetic 'van fashion.'
Because we always have to wear a uniform to compete, my teammates and I look the exact same. My belt is the only accessory that I get to choose. I usually wear a yellow cloth belt with cherries or a leather belt with a beautiful tree buckle that I got at a thrift store.
Housing Works is the coolest thrift store in the world, because not only are they the best thrift store - they're not the most thrifty thrift store - but they have amazing stuff and all of their proceeds go directly to kids, mostly homeless kids, living with AIDS and HIV in New York, in the metropolitan area.
Thrift shopping is really just an extension of me being that same kid and going into a place that's completely unconventional that has really endless possibilities in terms of outfits that you can put together and really just expressing yourself.