‘Guess how much this was,” I say to my partner mischievously, revealing with relish the latest toy I’ve found for our youngest son. It’s wooden, Montessori in style (apparently a ball dropping through a hole teaches him object permanence), and retails at about £20 new. “A quid,” my partner proffers, wearily: he is savvy to this game by now. This time, though, I can go one better. “Free!” I screech with glee. “Free! Can you believe that? Someone was giving it away on that secondhand WhatApp group.” I’m giddy with my find, drunk on the size of the bargain, but, as I add the new (to me) toy to the teetering pile of others – dolls, a tunnel, toy cars, a lunchbox – I can feel something – guilt, I think – gnawing away at me. Am I a secondhand overconsumer?
I’ve always been a champion of secondhand shopping. I was plundering charity shops before it was cool and, in a tale that has become family folklore, once found a standard lamp in a branch of the British Heart Foundation and carried it home on the bus. In fairness, that lamp has moved house with me seven times and still stands, resplendent, in my living room. But I fear too many of my other secondhand purchases have been flash-in-the-pan dopamine hits. These purchases gather dust in our bedroom, the study, my son’s toy box. Clothes I’ve bought from charity shops, heady with the exhilaration of them being “only £5”, lie crumpled and forgotten in the depths of my wardrobe before, months later, being dragged out and sold on Vinted for a couple of quid. And still I buy more, ensnared in the grip of what I’ve started to believe is something akin to an addiction.
Like other addicts, I convince myself my bargain-hunting habit isn’t, actually, unhealthy – something that’s surprisingly easy to do these days. Everyone, everywhere, is extolling to me the virtues of secondhand shopping: for the environment, for my wallet, for charities in need of funds. Apps (I have them all: Vinted, Depop, eBay) fuel my habit. I scroll through cheap clothes and toys at night and, at times, find myself unable to sleep because of the buzzy excitement of a purchase. I track my item’s delivery, logging on to the apps regularly to watch the dress, skirt or bag travel across the country. Of course, this is the most exciting bit. Inevitably, when whatever I’ve bought arrives – dropped off by a now familiar delivery driver – the anticipation evaporates.
After the festive period and the excess that comes with it, many, I suspect, will be planning post-Christmas clear-outs: downloading Vinted, perhaps, with the intention of selling on unwanted gifts. I wonder, though, whether any of these people will, like me, be sucked into a world of secondhand overindulgence. I fear, too, that in many ways, secondhand shopping is mutating into the fast fashion it purports to despise. Depop and eBay now accept Klarna, a buy now, pay later service that encourages shoppers to spend money they don’t have and can affect credit scores if users don’t cough up on time. Vinted’s algorithm “recommends” items it thinks users might like and will email them with not-so-subtle nudges. Preloved influencers, with honourable intentions, share on Instagram what they got for Christmas from charity shops for “just £10!” I’m starting to question whether the fact this consumption is secondhand makes as much of a difference as I thought it did.
My eldest son is a case in point. Aged three, one of his favourite things to do is go to the charity shop. I’ve always been rather smug about this, flaunting to others his apparent love of all things preloved. Not for him the shiny new toys of John Lewis or Smyths – he prefers our local Sue Ryder. It’s taken me a while – too long, arguably – to realise this small child does not have an innate desire to save money, protect the environment or donate to a good cause; he simply likes the thrill of a new toy train, a train that is, I’m ashamed to admit, often discarded quickly. And I simply buy another next time. I realise, now, I’ve not taught him the value of things – he doesn’t know the difference between a 50p toy train and a new £50 train set – I’ve taught him, simply, to value things.
It may be time for me to rein in my secondhand spending and maybe, even, to buy more things new. While I still think preloved shopping is important, I suspect, at least for me, heftier price tags would act as helpful barriers to overconsumption, forcing me to be intentional about what I’m buying. Perhaps I, too, need a lesson in object permanence: my secondhand purchases still exist, taking up space in my house, and my mind, even if I can no longer see them for all the other stuff. After all, nothing is really free. Everything, in the end, costs something.
