What Really Happens to a Thrift Store Donation
It's more complicated than you think
Do you ever wonder what happens to your donation after you drive away from your local thrift store?
First the bad news - On average less than half of whatever was donated ever ends up on the sales floor. More on that shortly.
The good news - What does sell supports a cause. Nearly every thrift store works to look like a professional resale shop, not a garage sale. One way to do that is to have minimum standards on what is put out for sale. They also work to minimize what goes into landfills.
Limited space is also a reality. It simply isn’t possible to save all of the good out-of-season stuff that is donated. In the north winter coats are donated all year, most stores save the best of the best until they run out of space. After that, they go to salvage. It’s just a reality. More on what salvage is below.
I used to devote a lot of time, effort, and space to saving as many winter coats as possible. We needed to provide that thrift store value on winter coats to as many people as possible so those of limited means could stay warm. Still, we couldn’t save them all.
Figuring out what can and can’t be sold is the real work. The process of sorting through random stuff is a lot more work than most people realize.
The details vary between operations, but this is how things go in general.
When you drop off a donation you probably meet the donation attendant that takes your stuff. Their job is mostly to be friendly and take good care of donations.
They also check for things that they don’t accept, household chemicals, old cans of paint, and so on. They also have the tough job of saying no to the ratty mattress, the cat fur-stained sofa, and other nasty stuff that people are really dumping. Their job isn’t as easy as it might seem.
Eventually, things to processors. They decide what goes to the sales floor, salvage, or garbage and price goods. Things with missing buttons, a rip, tear, stain, too many wrinkles, musty smells, wear on cuffs, collars, or pant bottoms, or holes in pockets, quickly disqualify an item. The little that is thrown away is moldy, smells of cigarettes, or worse. That’s the not-fun part of the job.
The better to best stuff is hung, tagged, and goes to the floor. No, clothing is not washed before going to the sales floor. Sorry.
This video is a great peek behind the curtain:
Hidden among the everyday stuff is the occasional gem like an Iron Maiden original concert tee shirt worth $1,000 (no kidding). Since the average textile producer goes through a hundred-plus piece per hour, stuff like that is usually missed.
That’s why there are so many Thrift Store Finds videos on YouTube.
Even clothing and textiles that are well past their prime can be repurposed or resold in bulk on the international market. It’s quite fascinating how unwanted US, Japanese, and European clothing creates jobs and affects economies in poorer countries. If you want to do a deep dive into that topic, the video below is informative and a bit scary.
Old clothes can become rags, cotton can be reprocessed and reused.
Wares or hard goods are everything else. It isn’t as easy as clothing. There is glass, metals, plastics, electronics, goods, jewelry, books, shoes, cardboard, occasional hazardous items, the list, and the adventure goes on and on. Each item has to be looked at and assessed just like clothing.
A few years ago bread machines were a fad. It seemed like everyone bought one for Mom for Christmas or Mother’s Day. Guess where most of them went? That’s right, buried deep in a cabinet, in the garage, or in storage somewhere. After it collected an inch or so of dust or was moved around enough times it went to the thrift store.
Thrift stores are where fads go to die.
One day I was walking a sales floor with a manager who had ten shelves devoted just to bread makers. It was a waste of space. They were already priced the same as used black friday toasters. ($100 items (new) were priced at $5, and they weren’t selling.) It wasn’t price, it was demand.
So the new rule: no more than one, max two shelves devoted to them. Only the best of the best went to the sales floor. Many perfectly good breadmakers went to salvage because no one wanted them.
A lot goes on after you drop off that donation. Your old clothes could end up in your neighbor’s closet or half a world away. That beat-up saucepan could become part of a car. Those shoes could be sold in your town, or half a world away. That book could be sold online to someone a thousand miles away or pulped into a paper grocery bag.
My most memorable bad donation was a Christmas tree. It had been put inside a very nice tree bag like those used for large high-end artificial Christmas trees. It was donated after Christmas so it was stored without being opened.
Come time to set for Christmas, thinking we had a super nice artificial tree we unzipped it and out poured tons of dry brown needles. Funny but not funny. Dried pine needles are a huge fire hazard and it took half an hour to clean up the mess. I guess the joke was on us.
Thanks for reading!
Thrift Retailer - Dedicated to the business of thrift.
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