Saturday, November 29, 2014

Like Twice, Black Friday, AAHAUL?

Sorry, but not sorry for not posting much. School is killing all my time. I'm still on a procrastination mode from Thanksgiving trying to get things out of the way early, but I've already got homework yelling in my ear.

You know I don't shop a lot, right? For one thing, my fair trade mind limits me to: Mata Traders, American Apparel, Threads 4 Thought, and People Tree

Do I have other options? Yes. I'm sure, but time is not on my side.

American Apparel

You know I have a love-hate relationship with AA? Love their clothes, hate my lack of money. I came into some around my birthday and spent quite a while trying to figure out what to get. Fate intervened when my tire blew out in front of a Discount Tires and my money decided to go towards a new set of rubber accessories for my car.

Anyway, as someone who really likes American Apparel, this HAUL business seems to be quite the Black Friday gimick. In the days leading up to Black Friday, the 5-10-15 sale was going on. The second Black Friday hits, everything from that sale doubles in price. WTH? To be quite honest, the best AA sales are the ones not associated with a "big sale" day. I still have the 5-10-15 sale link on my computer's memory and when you see the items - with their brand spanking new and more expensive prices - and the categories they fell under...yep, I lost out. A $5 shirt is now $18 for sale purposes.

Black Friday

I recall being thoroughly disappointed in the American public last year for the...7 Black Friday related deaths? Yes. Well, no deaths this year, so that's a plus, the most I heard was a fight over a barbie.

Like Twice

I recall on countless occasions commenting on how I really need to get my selling on. I have a lot of clothes that I don't/didn't wear and I needed to either put them up on eBay or Etsy on something. A sad realization that I came to was that: 1) eBay really sucks to use these days. 2) Clothing resale values are really low. Why do I even buy new? Anyway an ad on Facebook for Twice came up. I watched the video and...it was delightfully easy. You sign up, get a selling kit in the mail. Look at the accepted brands, load up your clothes and send off. No real expense, just time.

This required a bit of a heart to heart with my clothes as I had some attachment issues. What sold me though, was trying on clothes and realizing that I had other things in my wardrobe that were just easier to wear. By that, I mean that if you have a sweater that makes you feel...alright, you have to squint and think more about how you wear it oppose to another sweater that you just throw on and feel great in. Sentimental value or "I paid this much" sentiments don't exactly translate to $$. After going through bits of that, it was easy to just chuck clothing.

About 2 weeks later, I get this:


It was a much better return than I expected. A sad truth is, it's probably a lot more than what I would get off of eBay. I wish I had known about it earlier since I lost a fair amount of clothing to consignment - it didn't amount to much. Either way, Twice is a good call for downsizing the closet.