Boise, ID

Yes, I know that thrifting is not a real word, but it has become one of my favorite activities. One of my brothers, Seth, actually came up with this name and it’s just stuck. Thrifting is just a shorter term for thrift store shopping. Seth has always loved thrifting. He also has a really good eye for deals. When you know what to look for, you can save a lot of money by looking in a thrift store.
Cami, a friend of mine, was in town for the weekend, and we were looking for something to do. We wanted something to keep us occupied until another friend of ours got off of work, but we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. Then the thought came to me, what about thrifting? It had been a while since my last thrifting venture, so there would be plenty of new things to see.

We hit the first stop, the Idaho Youth Ranch on Five Mile. My friend and I amused ourselves for a while by browsing the shelves and examining whatever objects we found that intrigued us. I saw a neat radio that I wished I had enough money to buy. It was a shiny red radio, and it reminded me of one of those old, classic cars. It was too expensive for me, though, and I’m not in need of a radio right at the moment. I did find some nice stationary that I liked, and a cool box with four coasters. I’m always looking for some neat writing stuff, and in a few months I’ll be using those coasters at college. I really liked the look of the coasters and the box they came in. They’ve got stamps, stickers, and newspaper clippings on them. Sure, I could have gotten some nicer ones, but these ones looked like the coasters of a traveler, and I enjoy travelling. They made me think of all of the neat places that I would like to visit.

After we’d had our fill of looking around, we decided to hit the thrifting capital of Boise, which is at Five Mile and Fairview. Three thrift stores are right around that intersection. There’s another Idaho Youth Ranch, a Savers, and a Deseret Industries. We stopped at each of them and looked through just about every shelf. At Savers, I found a little Thomas the Tank Engine with a pull string on it. My nephew’s birthday party is coming up, and he is crazy about Thomas. Cami found a neat deck of cards, and I secretly wished I had seen them first. It was the design on the back of the cards that caught our attention. There was what looked like Prince Phillip (from Sleeping Beauty) on the back of each card. So, Cami bought those while I bought my Thomas.

Deseret Industries was the last one. We were pretty burned out by then. We discovered that after searching through thrift stores for a few hours, you kind of start to look at everything like it’s part of a thrift store. Your eyes keep doing the same kind of sifting and searching that they do as you pass along shelves even when you go outside or come back home. Once you get in the mindset, it takes a while to come back out of it. By the time we came home there was just enough time to let our brains rest for a while before our friend got off her shift at work. Once again, thrifting provided me with a fun time.