Restoration Thrift

I stopped in today as part of my self-​guided self-​designed walking tour of my new work neighborhood. Unfortunately, the construction on St. Claude makes this place kind of annoying to get to (especially if you have to walk by the construction workers), but once you’re inside everyone is very sweet and friendly. The selection is small, but it is much better organized than most other thrift shops I’ve been to. There are racks of shirts sorted by size and by color, and smaller racks of pants, skirts, sweaters, etc. sorted by size. There are also some shoes, furniture, and books.
For me, there’s a fine line between delightfully tacky and just plain old tacky, and unfortunately a lot of the items here fall on the tacky tacky side of that line. There are a lot of blazers with shoulder pads, pleated pants, and the like, which could be fun and quirky, but these were just out of date and bland. The radio station they had playing also struck me as tacky-​in-​a-​bad-​way — it was one of those «Give us your money and Jesus will love you» things. Yikes.
I would love to see their selection expand to include more costume-​y items. I did find a totally fabulous pair of rhinestone platform heels, but I think they were meant to be taken seriously…
The book section, which is where I always spend most of my time in thrift stores, was small but had a few good finds. The furniture section was pretty limited but prices seemed reasonable and the furniture looked like it was in decent shape, which isn’t always the case with the stuff you see at Goodwill.
I hope they get a larger and more varied selection of clothing and accessories. I really want to support this place and the awesome ladies who work there, but a girl only needs so many pairs of rhinestone heels. (Just kidding — give me all of them!)