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Hey, it's Kellene Bishop, the Preparedness Pro, and today's video that we're going to
present for you is going to show you how you can prepare for just about anything with very
little money. One of my secret weapons is the local thrift store. You don't have to
wait until you are poor and broke to go to a thrift store. In fact, you probably won't
get poor and broke if you go to a thrift store a little sooner before then. Anyway, I'm going
to show you all kinds of possibilities inside of just how you can really stretch your dollar.
Then we can turn some of those "I can'ts" into "I did". All right? Let's go. I have
everything I need: my notebook, my water, of course, 'cause this is some power shopping
sometimes, and of course, I always have to get a shopping cart in which I can fasten
my handles in. Because if somebody's going to steal my purse, they're going to have to
haul a lot more of it to get out. All right. Let's go, it's kind of like a treasure hunt.
One of the first places that I always go to is housewares, see if I can get some of my
canning jars and lids for dirt cheap.
This is the one at housewares that I really, really like because it's great for sealing the air out of items that I'm going to constantly
be getting into. $1.99 for a jar like this...excellent. I can't even beat that on Amazon once you
count in the shipping. Canning jars only 49 cents...great deal, especially in most the
parts of the country. This is a great find, a manual food processor, so you can save time
and save physical effort with or without electricity. And priced at $5.99. Now a lot of thrift stores
will actually have coupons on certain days or will have different prices depending on
what color the price is, if it's yellow, purple, gray. For example, at this particular thrift
store, every Monday is 99 cent day on a particular color of a price. $5.99 for a manual food
processor. Always open up the boxes, though, of anything that you're going to buy. I don't
care if there's tape on it or not. Always check and make sure that all the pieces are
here. But it looks good. Woo-hoo! Manual food processor at $5.99. This is a West Germany-made
clay cooking container. You could do this in your solar oven, put your meat, your aromatics,
your vegetables and such, but in your solar oven, just cover it up with a dark colored
towel, such as navy blue or black, put it in. What I like to do, is I like to get the
clay all wet before I put it in the solar oven and then the moisture is going to be
that much better inside your meats or your vegetables or even you could do some dessert
dishes in this. This would normally be $40 to $50, $7.99. Just found a pair of Italian
silver spoons, only $1.99. And this is silver, so they can, it could be an asset to you now
or in the future. But, thrift stores aren't just about what you need. Thrift stores are
also about an opportunity for you to make money. And this could easily sell on eBay
or Amazon for significantly more than $1.99. A salad spinner is a must in any home that
wants to preserve their produce for longer. You want to make sure that you wash it really
well, put it in the salad spinner to get it nice and dry, and then you can even use the
leftover juices for your soup or stew that's coming right up, too. It's a must have, and
for 5 bucks, great deal. I always make a stop to buy the fleece and quality handmade blankets.
If you can get your fleece for $3, even $2 a yard, that's a good deal. And thrift stores
are the way to get it. I don't care really what the design is because I'm not going to
use for my everyday and guests, and things of that nature. But it's much less expensive
than if you were to have to go to the fabric store and purchase it. I also like to keep
an eye out for beautiful homemade pieces such as this. This is a really beautiful, really
well done, great quality...$3. It's a steal. I'm always looking for things to help in taking
care of our pets in emergencies as well. I almost always am able to find a good pet carrier.
We also found some really, really high quality traps, a few times ago, that would normally
run in the hundreds of dollars, and we paid $30 each for. So take time to look around
and see what could really be valuable to your survival and your self sufficient lifestyle.
I can never find enough of this kind of great quality stuff. Fabulous work suit, nice thick,
excellent condition, a whomping $10. Money. This is a beautiful cast iron pan, heavy,
wonderful, made in the USA, love it, 'cause then I know it doesn't have the lead in it.
Normally you would expect to pay $20 to $30 for this, $6.99, not to mention the 20% discount
I'm going to get. Another excellent find. Ozark Trail, heavy duty tent, a whomping $10.
Hopefully you're seeing two components of how to use your thrift store. One, so that
you can acquire items that your family needs and wants for rock bottom prices. And two,
so that you can have a little treasure hunt and find items that you can increase your
profitability on from your home. For example, we have a 84 piece set of china over in this
case. They're selling for $199. This would easily go for $700 on eBay or Amazon. There's
a lot of tools out there as well. Books are a big seller. You can actually download a
scan app to your cell phone, scan a book, and it will tell you what the average going
price is for that book. So if you can get it here for $2.99 or if it could be one of
your free books, depending on what promotions you run into, then that's an awesome way for
you to earn a great deal of income. So there's no reason why you can't get where you want
to be in terms of acquiring the items that you and your family needs and have fun at
it too, and do it on your schedule. Self-employment rocks. Generally, when I go to the thrift
store I look for fabulous and functional. These are great water boots, eh, galoshes.
Nice, sturdy, quality-made. I do pay attention to the brands, because it gives me a great
deal of information of what the quality is of the sole and what I can't see. In this
case, $2 for this, and if it fits, I would definitely be taking it home. I actually spend
a great deal of time in the men's pants section. I keep my eye out for Levis and Wrangler brand
jeans. I don't care what size they are. I can do a great deal with jeans. Patching clothes,
patching tents, even making tents out of this particular type of material. It's not the
adulterated, it's the nice, heavy, strong jean material. As long as I can get it for
less than a dollar a yard, it's a good deal. These good old-fashioned thermoses are heaven-
sent when you are trying to preserve energy, keep hot water hot. Anything like that, that
you can find, would be beneficial for a time when you might not have electricity.
Tupperware is still very expensive, comparatively speaking, because it's excellent quality and it lasts
forever. So pay attention to these pieces, not only bringing them into your home, but
also using them as something that you can earn income in selling. One of the things
that you want to check at any thrift store you shop, is to find out what other deals
and incentives they have, above and beyond the prices that you see listed. One of the
things that we get here is, every time that we make a donation, they give us a 20% discount.
The thing is, they will give you one coupon for every donation that you make. So you may
want to split up your trips to the thrift store so that you can get as many coupons
as possible. 20% off of something that's already a great deal is worthy of a happy dance. You
may get a little bit grumpy sometimes when you go to the thrift store, especially when
you just paid $25 for a pizza peel, only to see it at the thrift store for $5. Every once
in awhile, you'll find something beautiful, like a beautiful piece of china. One little
tip though. Make sure you check on the bottom of it to make sure that it's a brand that
you recognize, or signature that you recognize. Because otherwise it might be a cheap imitation
that contains lead. But if it isn't, like this is, this is a great piece only $4, it
definitely would be worth having and putting for sale on eBay or having it in your own
home. Here's another find. These Fiskars scissors are in perfect condition. They're typically
$10 apiece. They're selling two of them for $3.99, plus I've got my coupon for 20% off.
Mind you, the scissors have absolutely nothing to do with preparedness, unless of course,
you're going to purchase them only to resell them and make some money so you can buy the
other things that you need. If you see something on TV that you think you just have to have,
might I suggest you first go to your thrift store, see if someone just had to have it,
maybe didn't fall in love with it like you think that you might. You'll save a lot. This
regularly retails for about 20 bucks on the TV commercials, only $3.99 at the thrift store.
Now don't get too excited with everything that you buy because sometimes the pricing
makes absolutely no sense. It's not a good deal. For example, normally when I go into
thrift stores, I will look at the framed pieces. Not because I want the picture in it, but
because I want the frame. I would expect to pay one to two dollars for a frame in a thrift
store. Unfortunately, whoever is doing the pricing at this store, doesn't have a clue
what they're doing. $6.99. (Laughs) I think I would wait until I found a 99 cent day on
a gray label before I would purchase something like this. So be careful, and be smart. If
you can pay attention and find collectors' items, such as Coca-Cola, comic book characters,
and such, you'll do an excellent job of earning additional income being able to sell it to
collectors on eBay or Amazon.You know, one other thing is, you can get really excited
about something, but stick to your price points. If you're not going to pay more than $2 a
yard for fleece, stick with it. No matter what. That'll save you a lot of money. Look,
we all make messes, we all have germs in our body, etc. One thing, though, I am careful
about is when I buy bed linens. It's not the messes and that, 'cause I can clean it. But
it is the bed bugs that you want to be mindful of. However, that being said, finding something
like flannel sheets, that's definitely on my plus, because it's going to keep people
warm in the winter and what if you have a few extra mouths to feed in a crisis scenario.
So I would take this home. I put it in a bag all by itself when I check out and it immediately
goes into the wash so that it doesn't infect any other part of my household. So we're going
to see if my persuasion skills can be handy. That's another thing that you want to bring
with you to any thrift store shopping. This is obviously a set of salad tongs. However,
I'm not going to pay $3 for just one part of a set. So we'll see if I can talk to the
manager and see if he'll sell me the set for the $2.99 price.
I got the manager to agree to give me the set for $2.99. It never hurts to ask. Hopefully you've learned that thrift
stores can play a big role in your preparedness efforts, getting the things that you need
for your own home and your family, as well as getting things that will help you to increase
your income so you could be more self- sufficient. And have the money you need to spend on everything
else that you want. For everything that I got, including books, some Tupperware, the
cast iron ware, some other pans, some blankets, I paid less than what it would have cost me
to buy this brand new and it's in mint condition. I'd say it was definitely a worthwhile trip.
This is Kellene Bishop, the Preparedness Pro. Check back with us at preparednesspro.com
for over eight hundred educational articles to help in your pursuit of the self-sufficient
lifestyle, and by all means, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss one
of our educational videos.