It was probably the third day of parenthood that I realized I needed to find a thrift store. My baby was already too big to wear about half of the new clothes. A good portion of the rest was regularly stained with various fluids from the baby. The little dry-cleaning-only sweaters someone had gifted us seemed like a sick joke. So finding a sweet consignment store a little outside of our area seemed like a godsend.
We had no idea.
Many of the benefits of second-hand clothing are highlighted, including being eco-friendly, the end of fast fashion, and the path to more mindful consumption. What’s less talked about is the benefits this fashionable approach can bring to parenting.
Just before she entered first grade, my daughter, who was no longer a baby, forced her father and me to stop believing that she had always had a false belief that she was not really a boy. Instead she was a girl. No one needs girls’ clothes. Their whole new wardrobe. I tried to argue that her clothing was gender-neutral, especially at age 6, when girls and boys wore T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers to school. But I was missing the point. Gender transition requires transition first and foremost. As any budding fashionista knows, wearing the same old clothes doesn’t make you new.
What saved us was a consignment shop. When we moved from the men’s corner to the women’s corner, they didn’t raise an eyebrow. After all, this is the whole idea behind second-hand clothing stores. They provide an opportunity to try something different, to be partially new, to release something that no longer works, not because it’s bad or wrong, but simply because it no longer fits. My daughter was thrilled to not only have clothes for girls, but clothes that actually belonged to girls. The store liked the word “rehome,” but it always bothered me because I misunderstood it. We didn’t give the clothes a new home. Clothes don’t need a home. Clothes have given us a new home.
Now that my daughter is older, we no longer need to have an entire wardrobe at once, but buying secondhand continues to provide us with more than just cute clothes. By buying second-hand clothes, you can pass on to your teens important values that they might otherwise resist, such as making financially responsible choices, distinguishing between needs and urges, and accepting personal responsibility in the face of global catastrophe and political inaction.
Once, while fueling up between thrift stores in Manhattan, my daughter and I were eating pizza and listing our favorite finds. “A velvet bomber jacket,” I said. “Brand new Kate Spade,” she replied. That’s why I came up with the idea of “stripe palazzo pants.” “It’s a platform with a lot of buckles,” she said. When I tried to return another one, she said, “What about me? You spared me.”
My daughter was adopted, I’m proud To be hired. The joke wasn’t a particularly humble boast, as thrifting is her favorite activity. But it gave me the opportunity to reassure her that I loved her more than words could describe, without getting grumpy or being accused of being guilty or cheap. “You were the frugal person of a lifetime,” I said, and she knew that what I felt for her was the same mad love and indescribable luck she felt when she found that Kate Spade bag with the tags still on. It also meant that we had to talk about how she was unwanted and unadopted, how adoptive families are matched far more carefully than thrifty families with designer bags, and how a birth mother putting a child up for adoption is not the kind of thing that puts an outgrown sweater on the donation pile, but the most difficult and complicated act of love I know.
By being willing to wear the Distressed, we are now able to talk about perhaps the most difficult topics of all: aging, disease, and death. My mother, who is nearing the age of 80 and has health concerns, has a rule that she doesn’t eat anything new. She told me that I had to get rid of all my belongings at every opportunity so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it. When she dies, that’s what she means. But I don’t want to prepare it before I need it. I don’t even want to think about it. I understand that you can’t cope with anything. rear When you are gone, the preparations are naturally made before the time is up. But of course, understanding has nothing to do with it.
In contrast, my mother’s granddaughter is much more fixable after years of practice. She doesn’t want to remember her deceased grandparents any more than I do. But for her, the cycle of acquiring, loving, and shedding is natural and even admirable. Moving items and getting rid of things that are no longer needed or loved simply creates space for new things and frees up space for what comes next. So she helps her grandmother sort and organize things: a pile to donate, a pile to exchange for credits, and a pile to sell online.
And we have a lot to go to our new home, our home. My daughter would say, “Can I have this?” And her grandmother doesn’t even look up at the “this” in question before answering “yes.” My mom is thrilled to have someone who loves the things she no longer loves, someone to pass on not just the items, but the stories that come with them. The daughter carries a beaded clutch with a story about how her grandmother hid a transistor radio inside so she could listen to the World Series during High Holiday services. My mom handed me a gold signet ring with a little secret door on it, and we laughed until we cried as we guessed what my great-grandmother was hiding inside.
All of this makes the difficult task of sorting, letting go, and preparing for something that no one wants, and that we all know will happen eventually, easier. Sure, there’s a lot to deal with, but it’s full of gifts: stories, laughter, family history, a sense of oneself in the world, a way to talk about difficult things, an urge to share, and the rare, elusive opportunity to declare undying love in front of your teens without being cheap — no, guilt-free.
Laurie Frankel is new york times Author of best-selling, award-winning novels family family, one two three, Goodbye for now, atlas of loveReese’s Book Club Pick It’s always like this. Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and border collie.
