buying secondhand

i noticed recently that all of the knees in alexander's jeans have holes in them. in fact, i sent him to school one day in jeans that were perfectly fine, and when he came home there was a huge hole in 1 knee and a small one in the other. craptastic! now, i shop pretty much exclusively at children's place. not becuz i love their clothes, which i do, but becuz i have a credit card for them & the bill goes to my mom (thanks, nana!). but i'd already gone shopping there this month cuz isabelle's on a dress & skirt kick. all of a sudden, she's a totally girly-girl. headbands & skirts with tights every day. and even though my mom would be cool, i didn't want to do that again. especially since spring is coming (someday!) and i need to go through the totes of stuff i packed up from last year to see what still fits & what needs to be replaced.

so we decided to go to goodwill. i could have gone to kmart, but their quality isn't the best. and i couldn't find the once upon a child in the north hills. i really wanted to go to old navy, but their prices are outrageous unless you catch them on sale. and at goodwill i found a great selection of jeans in his size that are heavier than what i would have found at either old navy or children's place for a fraction of the price. and honestly, in this economy you've got to watch your pennies. i spent as much for 5 pairs of jeans at goodwill as i would have for 2 at old navy or children's place. plus, they had an organ (unplugged, thankfully) that the kids sat and played on while i shopped. i definitely wouldn't have found that elsewhere :)

for some reason, shopping at once upon a child doesn't seem like secondhand. i think it's becuz they're so picky about what they'll accept, while at goodwill you still hafta check. but if i'm looking for special occasion clothes, once upon a child is my first thought. 2 years ago i found this beautiful deep plum velvet dress for isabelle that still had the tags on. originally it was $50 and i got it for $10! of course, they wouldn't take it back once isabelle'd outgrown it when i included it in the piles of stuff i was trying to sell back. oh well. we got awesome Christmas photos that year :)

for myself, my favorite place to shop is my church's rummage sale. i always help with the sorting so i get to shop early. and there's a couple of older ladies with impeccable taste that are tall, so their trousers fit me well :) a couple of years ago i got a black pin striped pants suit for $3! talk about a bargain! :) but i can't always count on the rummage sale for the kids.

when i was a kid, i hated shopping at goodwill. hopefully, my kids won't be as snobby as i was & will just take it in stride. :)

QuiBids

so, i stumbled across this website this evening where you bid on stuff & can get it really cheap. it's called QuiBids, and it's truly brilliant! i just watched an auction for a BRAND NEW ipod nano & someone bought it for $4.34. each auction starts at $0.01 and every bid moves the price up by $0.01, BUT each bid costs the bidder $0.60 and adds 3 seconds to the clock for additional bids. so even though the final bidder only paid $4.34 (plus $11 shipping), QuiBids got paid $260.40 for an item with a retail value of $199.99. so they're able to sell stuff AND MAKE MONEY DOING IT while we're able to buy stuff for a mere fraction of the cost. and just cuz the retail value is $199.99 doesn't mean that that's what they paid wholesale. amazing!

but i don't think i have the patience to sit and bid on stuff. since each bid costs $0.60, if it takes you 20 or 30 bids to finally win an item, if you just come in at the end, you're still paying $12 to $18 on top of the purchase price + shipping. and since each bid adds 3 seconds to the clock they take forever to end. when i started watching the ipod nano auction, there were only about 15 seconds left. but i watched for about 45 minutes (off & on *smile*) before it finally ended. but even if you used 80 bids, which would be $48, but managed to get something like an ipod nano for $5, you're still getting it for more than 50% off. and all the people who lost the auction just spent however much to TRY to get the item, & the price of your bids is non-refundable if you lose the auction. so losing an auction at QuiBids sucks a LOT more than losing on eBay. you're actually losing more than just your time. cuz i'm sure the people who lost the auction placed at least 10-20 bids, which means they spent like $12 so that someone else could have the item they wanted. that blows! :)

New on Ebay! :)

I used to sell Mary Kay. I started cuz I wore it & I figured it'd be an easy way to get my stuff & I'd be able to support my habit. But I hated doing classes & parties, so I just stopped doing it. But I had a ton of stuff just sitting around my basement. Then my friend, Jara, told me about selling it all on Ebay. So about a week ago I finally got around to listing a bunch of stuff.

What a thrill! Over half of it sold, which is really awesome! And it was really exciting waiting at the end to see how much everything sold for. I've got another half hour or so for the final batch to finish up so that I can see how much I made. I've got some stuff that I listed this evening & more stuff that'll I'll try to do tomorrow, plus relisting the stuff that didn't sell yet.

Now I'm looking around my house for more stuff that I'm not using that I can sell! I had no idea how easy it would be to sell on Ebay. The only downside is that now PayPal has a hold on my account. They're holding each deposit for 21 days to make sure there's no issues. I guess there's a lot of disputes with Ebay purchases, so even though I've had my Etsy shop open for over a year & have had no problem with my account, they feel the need to check now that I'm also selling on Ebay. Oh well. Thankfully I had a good holiday season, so I've got a cushion to take care of the shipping fees until they release my funds. But it still sucks. Especially since they're not just holding my Ebay deposits. I've never had a problem with my Etsy sales, but they'll be affected as well until I increase my Ebay seller profile.

Well, I've got 20 items that I'm waiting for payment on, and as soon as the last of my auctions finishes I'll send out revised invoices to all of my customers & get that money! Whoo hoo! :)