The People of Goodwill: Teenaged Girls in Mom Jeans

Right now hordes of teenage girls are searching thrift stores for your donated mom jeans. Then they are taking them home and turning them into Iggy Azalea-style high-rise booty shorts. And then they are going back to the thrift store to find your soccer shorts from 1994 and turning those into sporty Iggy Azalea inspired ensembles. 

This is happening. The kids are upcycling your mom pants. 

Religious Kitsch

Gazing at the blessed mother high-fiving baby Jesus while I do the dishes puts a smile on my face. Also, I use the basil she's growing. 

These planters became popular after WWII when the Japanese began mass producing ceramic figurines and the western world braced itself for the perils of the atomic age. 

Display them in their original glory or spray paint your Mary a clean white or bold color. You can very gingerly drill holes in the base of the planter or add rocks for drainage. Then add herbs, succulents or cacti. 

Buying New-to-You Stuff: The Goodwill Checklist

The guy who founded Goodwill -  Edgar J. Helms – was the original upcycler. A hundred years ago he asked rich people in Boston to donate their stuff, and he hired poor people to mend and repair their donations. Then they sold the stuff. 

All these years later, Goodwill is still going strong.

I like to take Edgar’s revolutionary idea to the next level and encourage EVERYONE to buy new-to-you stuff. Be radical. Reuse something or take it and make it better. Leave knowing that the profits from your purchases have more to do with helping people than enriching shareholders.

Living in a major metropolitan area with one of the largest Goodwill’s EVER makes it easy to shop there. The store is the size of an airline hanger and I make twice-weekly sojourns to it.

My Goodwill Checklist is crucial and consists of:

-     (a) Items I am always looking for (vintage Mary planters, mid-century modern stuff, trivets,                 trinkets that trip my trigger etc.)

-     (b) Every day items we need (a ladle or platter – buy it new-to-you at Goodwill instead of new           at Target or on Amazon)     

-     (c) Specialty items (stuff I want to decorate with that I may not find for months – like a portrait)

The thing about shopping at Goodwill is that it requires delayed gratification. You very well may leave with nothing. In fact, unless you’re prepared to leave with nothing, you’re not ready to go. This flies in the face of what it means to shop like an average American; be above-average and give it a go. 

Money in the Bank

In keeping with the maxim, kids break shit, I sought an alternative to the classic breakable piggy-bank. This wooden elephant bank was the color of Pepto-Bismal originally, and the plexi-glass sides were cloudy.

Some Goof Off, minor sanding, and a can of yellow spray-paint transformed that sad elephant into this triumphant creature of change. 

Upcycle Fix #2

Our child could not resist the siren song of this Dalmatian toilet brush holder. I brought it home and washed it. I put the toilet brush in it. Then my kid broke it. 

So we glued the dog back together. Now you'd have to be crawling around our bathroom floor or barfing in the toilet to notice anything amiss. 

Upcycle Fix #1

Kids break shit. My child is especially drawn to my rarest finds. He looks with his eyes and breaks with his hands - and then we fix it. 

This stunning insulated pitcher suffered a chipped spout

We used a Dremmel to sand down the lip and reclaimed the pitcher. 

Mama Said – The Upcycle as a Political Act

The Shirelle’s sang “mama said there’ll be days like this, there’ll be days like his mama said” and LL Cool J rapped “mama said knock you out” in an homage to his grandmother’s advice to knock out his critics. It’s the hard driving hip-hop “mama said” directive I’m channeling.

LL said, “I'm gonna take this itty bitty world by storm/ and I'm just gettin warm”. And while he was rapping about his tech nine and creating the self-aggrandizing anthem of all time, there’s something to be said about taking our world by storm and confronting the literal shit-storm we’ve created.

Upcycling is less about crafting, and more about purposeful political actions in my world. Simply reclaiming something discarded as your own and cleaning it up is an upcycle. Repairing stuff you already own is an upcycle. You do not have to invest in spray-paint or fabric and alter an object dramatically for the project to be an upcycle.

Pencil Pouch Push-Pin Upcycle

A bag of miniature erasers beckoned to me from the office supply section of Goodwill. The back story I imagined included a studious 8th grade girl discarding these in preparation for serious high-school erasers - maybe one of those white ones with the little box around it.

I bought the erasers and super-glued flat thumb-tacks to the back. Now I have super-cool, one of a kind push-pins populating my bulletin boards. The entire project cost less than $3. 

Do Go Chasing Waterfalls

Waterfall dressers were the mass produced art-deco staple of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s - clean lines, geometric patterns, and the signature rounded edge.

Most of these are made out of plywood and half of them were part of
someone's Great Depression era newlywed bedroom suite.

We bore a 3" diameter hole in the back and turned our's into a TV stand.

Afghans in Your Freezer

Women have been upcycling balls of yarn into granny squares since the Victorian era. Someone lovingly crocheted these together, and I bought them all for less than $10. 

Freeze rad afghans after you buy them. Seriously. Freezing thrift store stuff kills any of God's insectile creatures. Leave it in there overnight and then wash it. 

Thrifting is Hunting

That vintage bread box you scored is yours and only yours, because of your stealth and maybe even your cunning. You are actually in competition with your fellow shoppers. Thrift store stealth means abandoning your cart - or using it to ram through congestion. You own your space, and you take your time. Go early in the morning or late at night. Avoid senior citizen discount day. And finally, never leave a piece of furniture unattended while you look for a sales associate. Hover around it until one of them comes near you.  

Scanderson

My self-dubbed “Scanderson” design aesthetic – where Scandinavian influences meet Wes Anderson like kitsch - lends itself to scavenging for home décor. It’s vintage and modern. It’s radical and it’s eclectic – because nothing matches (except it does) and I found most of it at Goodwill.

Upcycle Manifesto

Fuck Pottery Barn. If you find it at a thrift store, an estate sale, or someone’s front yard and you reclaim it and reuse it, it’s an upcycle. It’s also a radical act – because, in an economy dependent on our mindless consumption, transforming someone else’s garbage into new-to-you stuff is almost subversive. I recommend just starting, but a literature review on the topic would include: Rufus and Lawson’s The Scavenger’s Manifesto, Gavin Wade’s ‘Upcycle this Text’, and that YouTube video about the Story of Stuff.