Abbey's Road: Fine-tuning 'Thrift-dar' for the younger ones

There are many lessons I hope to pass down to my kids in the relatively small window of time that I have them under my roof: Aside from basics like getting dressed and graduating out of diapers, there’s chores, of course, and how to be humble and kind, and how to load the dishwasher correctly and the importance of moving your body and eating your vegetables.

All great and valuable things.

I could devote a novella to this, but it would be extremely boring. So I won’t.

Instead, I’d like to share one significant piece of the legacy I hope to leave behind, so that when my daughters are on their own, they will be able to navigate the world with a little more cash in their wallets (What is ‘cash'?) and a little more panache in their step.

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This skill is called “Thrift-dar” — the ability to navigate to the nearest and most appropriate thrift store at a moment’s notice — and it’s not as simple as pulling something up on Google Maps.

To illustrate, allow me to paint you a scenario.

Not long ago “The Bigs” — this is how, with three kids, we designate the elder two — and I went to visit a loved one, but happened to arrive at a time when she was napping. Not wanting to disturb her, we were left with a strange gap in time between the present and when we needed to pick up Tiny from an event. It would have been useless to drive home and leave again, but we’d be much too early if we went straight to our destination.

And this, friends, is where "Thrift-dar" comes in. After years of fine-tuning this sixth sense, having lived in our town for 17 years and becoming intimately familiar with the secondhand options, I reviewed my mental map of destinations, determined which thrift store was closest and also on the way to our next stop and reasoned that we had 15 minutes to "speed-thrift" before we needed to pick up Tiny.

The thought process looks something like this:

“OK, if we take Main Street toward the school, technically we only need to detour slightly to make it to Thrift ‘R' Us. But Thrift ‘R’ Us has been off with prices lately and I usually prefer them for lamps and furniture, so perhaps it would be better to go further down the road to Thrifty Jane’s so we can look at school clothes. Let’s do that!”

We ended up with a pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts and a lead on a recliner that didn’t end up panning out.

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By the time we pulled up to pick up Tiny, we were practically breathless and she was looking rather dejected sitting next to the final two summer day-camp students whose parents were probably somewhere thrifting like us.

“Sorry, we were thrifting,” I apologized as she pulled open the van door.

This revelation brought her to a whole new level of being crushed, and her face fell as she held back tears: “Next time, I want to come!”

A few weeks later, The Littles — this is how, with three kids, we designate the younger two — and I went to drop off something at the same loved one’s place of residence, And, lo and behold, our timing was equally abysmal.

We stood in the hall for a moment to try to figure out what to do, when Tiny looked up at me with an impish grin.

“Welllll,” she said in a voice that only a 7-year-old girl with long eyelashes and summertime freckles could successfully pull off as innocent, “we do have a weird gap of time.”

I gaped at her. She hadn’t even been along on the first junket, she just intuitively knew.

Quickly, I called up my "Thrift-dar" and calculated that we would pass a Goodwill on our route to pick up Bookworm from her location.

“Technically, Secondhand Charlie’s is closer to where we need to be, but I haven’t been to this Goodwill in a few weeks and I need to find a new casserole dish to replace the one that broke. We have 20 minutes. Let’s go!”

I am pleased to report that Operation: Casserole Dish was a success, and Bookworm wasn’t even mad that she was the last one to be picked up.

She is my flesh and blood — she gets it.

It may have helped that our haul included a new dress for her.

And best yet, my children are already fine-tuning their "Thrift-dar" skills, so that someday they will be able to carry this legacy on to their own children.

Are there more productive and cheaper ways of spending tiny increments of down time? Absolutely. Are there less productive and more expensive ways? Also, yes.

So we will treasure these spontaneous trips and the miscellaneous treasures we find, because truly the thrill of the hunt — together — is the reason why we’re in it.

Abbey Roy is a mom of three girls who make every day an adventure. She writes to maintain her sanity. You can probably reach her at amroy@nncogannett.com , but responses are structured around bedtimes and weekends.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Abbey's Road: Fine-tuning 'Thrift-dar' for the younger ones