My Love Affair with Second Hand Clothing

Since I have been able to afford it, I have been a lover of shopping and clothes.

I grew up wearing my sister’s hand-me-downs from Sears and I hated it. I can remember only a handful of times as a young child that I got new clothes. It was a big production when I did. We would get on the bus—since we didn’t own a car—and head downtown to the Sears store or the Montgomery Wards store. These were the only places that we shopped.

When I went to school, I was jealous of most of the girls because they had new clothes and were stylish, but me on the other hand, spent my time in Toughskins, and used ones for that matter. I swore that I would never ever wear someone’s hand-me-downs again.

After college and marriage and a good job, I came into my love affair with shopping. A day with the “girls” always included shopping and lunch, or shopping and dinner or just plain shopping. We were always up on the latest fashion and were always trendy looking. We subscribed to all the magazines that kept us up on the fashion industry. Sometimes we would just jump in the car and head to Chicago and Michigan Ave. where we knew that we would see and be able to purchase the latest and greatest in fashion.

But then the days of kids came—no more trips to Chicago, girls day out turned into a couple of hours with our kids together at each other’s homes. Life changed and children became more important.

My subscriptions to Glamour and Vogue became subscriptions to Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. My closet started to fill with “comfortable clothing” instead of beautiful cutting-edge styles. My favorite store became Wal-Mart instead of Bergners. My body just didn’t seem to fit anymore into those size fives after two c-sections and no time to workout. Two babies in two years and me a stay-at-home mom had changed everything.

But I knew that it was only a matter of time when the babies would no longer be babies, I would have time to work out and I would go back to work.