#RethinkReuse with Value Village

Today is a big day in New Minas, after many months of waiting, Value Village is officially open in the old Zellers location at County Fair Mall!

If you aren’t local, you probably don’t understand why this is a big deal, but since the closing of Zellers, this space has set empty at the mall, and our mall in general is really quite a sad sight. So to have a new store come in – and one as large as Value Village is fabulous, and by the looks of the parking lot (which hasn’t seen this much action in YEARS) everyone seems to think it’s pretty great too!

Tuesday evening I was invited to their Sneak Peek event to check out the new store, see all that they have to offer and to see just how far I could make $50 stretch when I went on a mission to #FindTheFind.

I had to teach Zumba until 7:30pm, so I came home and quickly cleaned up and headed to New Minas, arriving right around 8pm. Right inside the door I was greeted by Azure who hooked me up with a Value Village Super Savers Club Card which gives you invites to special events, member only coupons, a special offer on your birthday, contests and more (and it’s free!). She also explained how their Community Donation Centre works. As someone who often uses the Diabetes Donation Bins that they have around I was particularly interested in learning more about the Donation Centre. If you have smaller bags to donate you can bring them right in the store and drop off in the bin, or you can go through their drive thru where  they will unload your donations for you. They welcome clothing, small appliances, shoes & accessories, bed and bath items, media (books, CD’s DVDs, etc.), Furniture (check with your local store before loading up your old furniture though to make sure they can take them!), and housewares.

Something I didn’t know is that they offer a Donor Appreciation Card and for each large, full box of shopping bag (24x12x12) you donate they will punch your Donor Appreciation Card which will allow you to accumulate up to a 30% discount in store. One bag/box offers you a 5% discount and with each subsequent donation your discount increases by 5% up to 30% max. The discount card can only be used once though, so most people will save it until they’ve donated enough to redeem it for the full 30% savings.

When you do drop off donations, Value Village pays the Canadian Diabetes Association, which helps fund their programs and services right in our community, and that is a pretty fabulous thing!

Inside the store is set up in a really organized fashion. The clothes are all hung up, sorted by gender, type and size making it easy to look through all that is available. Other departments are divided into sections as well making it an enjoyable shopping experience. I know some people have voiced a concern that Value Village will hurt the Frenchies stores (which is a local chain of used clothing stores), but I really don’t think it will. Some people like the fun of digging through bins of clothing at Frenchies, I personally haven’t been there in years because I don’t have the time to spend sorting through bins. I much prefer having everything hung up and easy to look through, so I think Value Village will appeal to people like me, who like to thrift shop but like to do so in a more organized fashion. 😉

But enough talk, let’s move along to my shopping trip shall we? I wasn’t really in “need” of anything so I went with the intention of seeing what fun things I could find, with the plan to focus my attention on kitchen/bakeware gadgets, because Suzi loves her kitchen gadgets. 😉

First up I found a pair of silicone muffin pans and a grab bag with two heart shaped silicone candy moulds (look out Valentine’s day!), a melon baller (I’ve always wanted one!) and a strawberry huller. I have a watermelon in the fridge right this minute and I can’t wait to crack open and use my melon baller on, it’s the little things…

In that same aisle I also found a lovely silicone bundt cake pan that I snatched up and something else I’ve been wanting for quite a while – a cheese board! These make great accessories when you are doing food photography, but they cane be pretty expensive. This one is nice and heavy and only $3.99. What you can’t see in the picture below is that the flip side has a slate inlay for more heavy duty cutting. Pretty swanky!

As for the Bundt Cake itself, I had to make that 😉 but look how great it turned out! I was concerned at how easy it would be to turn the cake out but it came out like a dream, and the bonus of silicone is I could more or less “peel” the pan off the cake which is something you certainly can’t do with a traditional pan. The design on top came out wonderfully and everything. And that cheese board, I swoon. Get ready to see lots of pictures of it in my Instagram feed!

Once out of the kitchen and housewares section I found myself in media. You guys. So. Many. Books. And they have a buy 4 books, get 1 free deal which I didn’t take advantage of that day, but definitely will be using in the future. The cost of the books is based on their original cover price, with the most expensive being $4.99. I picked up The Rosie Project which is in perfect condition, and while browsing the books I stumbled across the DVD section where I found Season 2 of Get Smart (still in the packaging) for $3.99. Well that was a no brainer. #NerdForLife 😉

Next I hit up the shoe and accessory section.  I was on the hunt for a new change purse (I keep losing mine! What is the deal with that!?), and found this cute little Coach wristlet that makes a perfect change purse and a Coach wallet – which I didn’t need, but for $1.99 I figured I’d give it a home.

Finally, I took a swing trough the clothing section. Because I came right from Zumba I didn’t feel like trying clothes on (I put clean clothes on before I left, but I hadn’t actually showered so…), so picked up a couple items I knew would fit. First was this cute bird shirt (which my husband rolled his eyes at because apparently 2 or 3 people at work have the same one),

and this basic grey t-shirt which is so soft and extra long – perfect for my long ole torso.

This fall, Value Village is challenging people to show that they Give A Sh!rt about their clothing footprint by making their next new t-shirt a thrifted one, and donating items they no longer need rather than throwing them in the garbage. Did you know only about 15% of clothing and textiles actually get reused or recycled, but nearly 100% are recyclable?

Each year, people consume over 80 billion pieces of clothing, causing the clothing industry to become one of the world’s biggest polluters. But a few small decisions about what you wear can make a huge difference for the planet. By making the choice to shop thrift, people can save up to 700 gallons of water that would go into creating just one new cotton t-shirt and 1,800 gallons of water that would go into making a pair of jeans. And donating your clothes to Value Village’s nonprofit partners, instead of ditching them, can help keep hundreds of millions of pounds of reusable clothing from piling up in our landfills every year.

So I encourage you to #RethinkReuse and tell the world that yes, #IGiveAShirt by thrifting some of your new fall clothing for yourself and your family instead of always going retail.

In celebration of National Thrift Shop Day on August 17, Value Village stores across Canada will host a one-day sale where thrift shoppers can save 50 percent on all clothing, shoes, accessories and bed & bath items.

I think it’s safe to say that Value Village is definitely on my list of valley shopping destinations, in fact I was already back there this afternoon (which is when I took the pictures of the parking lot you saw above) to see what other goodies I could scrounge up on my way home! The answer is a copy of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard in perfect condition for $2.99. I told you I was a nerd. 😉

So I hope you’ll check out Value Village the next time you are in New Minas, you never know what awesome finds you might uncover!!

Disclosure: I was provided with a $50 Gift Certificate for attending the Sneak Peek event. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.