I hate paying full price for anything - especially kids toys and clothes that will be outgrown in a nanosecond. How about you?
I have recently fallen in love with consignment shopping! I have gone to a few local consignment/resale stores and found a few good deals. I found a FANTASTIC resale shop in Albuquerque that had a room where everything in there was $.25 each - including exersaucers and other big items as well as clothes. I have found several weekend-long consignment sales in our area that are fantastic.
The key to consignment shopping is to know what the retail price for new items is. Let's say you are shopping for clothes for your kids. Take a little bit while shopping in regular stores to pay attention to basic price ranges for various brands. As you shop at the consignment store, pay attention to the brand, the wear, and condition of the clothes. Some consigners seriously overprice their items. For example, I found a Kohl's store brand outfit (top and pants) that I could get new on sale in the store for $10 on sale at consignment for $14! On the other hand, after some searching, I found great deals - Thomas pj's for $2, 3 pairs of shorts for $1.50, etc.
I have also found it helpful to have a list of other non-clothing items that I would like to purchase. For this most recent trip, I knew I wanted to look for: a molded changing pad, a diaper genie, new Avent newborn nipples, car seat protectors for footprints on my van seats, pack n play quilted sheets, toy vacuum, mr. potato head parts, and great board books.
After about 2 hours of hunting, I did find quite a bit of things on my list! I spent a total of $50 and got ALL THIS STUFF!
- motorized fire truck
- 3 pair shoes
- magnetic lap easel
- toy saxophone
- mr. potato head with tons of parts
- skee ball machine
- potty training board books
- truck board books
- tons of clothes
- 2 brand new Avent nipples
