Things used to be one-of-a-kind. Things used to be formed by human hands. Someone sewed your shirt. Someone built your table. Someone crocheted your blanket, perhaps weaving the yarn beforehand. Sometimes that someone was your mother; sometimes that someone was you. If you were wealthy, then you may have paid that someone, or that someone’s mother, or that someone’s father if he happened to be the local tailor.

And when the shirt grew flimsy and the table cracked and the blanket began to unravel, this original would be turned into something else. Shirts were turned into aprons were turned into cleaning rags. Tables were made into stools were made into shelves. People didn’t use terms like “recycling” or “sustainability.” These were the things they had, so these were the things they used. As little as possible was thrown out or given away.

In many instances, things were not easy to procure in the first place, let alone replace. Sometimes once the thing was gone, that was it.

The assembly line was invented in the Industrial Revolution’s second stage around 1870. This led to the first surge of wholesale ready-to-wear clothing and its consequent unprecedented supply. Clothing became more replaceable. This eventually made way for the secondhand clothing industry. It was much easier to get stuff, so, for the first time, it became easier to give stuff away.

The teenager behind the counter folded the t-shirts with mechanical efficiency. Her long fingers were topped with pointy, pink nails that looked nice on the teal fabric. She folded the soft cloth into curved angles, the sleeves tucked away, the v-neck centered with precision, the length of the shirt indiscernible in its rectangular form. It was the spring of 2021 and I was bravely entering foreign territory. Despite regularly striding through the air-conditioned halls of my neighborhood mall to bring my kids to the indoor playground or to stop at the pharmacy, I hadn’t been inside a clothing store in years.

I eyed the fluid motion of her hands. She spread a new shirt on the counter.

“Ahem,” I said.

She glanced up at me and then immediately looked back down. “Yes?”

“I’d like to return this sweater. Please.”

The shirts were piling up. Each perfect rectangle perched on the rectangle below.

“Do you have the receipt?” She didn’t stop for an instant.

“It was a gift.”

“Do you have the gift receipt?”

When Gili had come to visit me as I was healing at home a few months earlier, she had brought the sweater and a pair of pants as a gift. It was a nice, friendly gesture, especially since she knew how averse I was to shopping.

“The pants are great,” she’d said, “elastic, loose and comfortable. Good for recuperating. The sweater opens in front, so you won’t have to lift your arms.”

She was right. The pants were, in fact, loose and comfortable, so I kept them, despite not being ideal post-op pants for a mastectomy. I’d had two drains grotesquely hanging out of my torso for weeks to help remove the extra fluids, and I’d needed big pants pockets for the drainage bags so that they wouldn’t pull at my already bruised chest. The sweater would have been good since it opened in front, and I’d been told to wear anything that minimized arm movement, but it was so damned ugly.

The girl was working on a second pile now, pulling out more teal fabric from an unseen, seemingly endless, source behind the register.

“No gift receipt.” I gazed to her left at the shelves of what looked like stacked shirts. There was a column of red, then a column of orange, then a deep mustard yellow. The colors shifted in a rainbow-inspired direction: lime green, forest green, teal, blue and onwards. All folded perfectly, all presenting identically.

Were all of them dyed in the same factory? I wondered. They must be, but suddenly I couldn’t help imagining a row of factories whose only differentiating factor is the colors they use. Color street, somewhere deep in industrial China. The red factory, followed by the orange, and the deep mustard yellow. Probably there is a normal, sunshine yellow factory as well. Maybe that one comes first. I grinned at myself, glad the salesclerk still wasn’t looking at me.

“I don’t have any receipt. But it’s totally new, brand new, never been worn, and its tags are still on.”

When I get a bag of hand-me-downs from a friend or wander into a secondhand store, I don’t think so much. I try on the clothes and shut up. Hand-me-down clothes had the same origins as news clothes, I knew, but I didn’t find myself in a Chinese factory daydream when looking at them.

“Hang on.” She had stopped folding and carefully lifted one of the piles. She rested one hand on top, and the other cupped the bottom. She walked out from around the counter and as she stepped past the mustard column her torso blended in perfectly with the stacks behind her.  Shirts, I thought confidently.

 I placed the bag with the sweater on the counter in the bare space created by her now-shelved pile. She came back and she peeked into the bag.

“Okay,” she said, “you can have a store credit.”

I left the store ten minutes later with a loose, navy-blue short sleeve shirt. The navy factory must have been the last one before the black; the shirt was very dark. The surgery had been months earlier and I hadn’t really expected them to take the sweater back in the sweltering summer heat. But the new shirt was perfect; I was healed, drainless, and free to lift my arms. It was a good shirt, light and breezy, almost as if it had already been worn. It’s even flimsier now since I brought it home from the store – three years of wear and drying in the sun has taken its toll.

Secondhand consumption has risen continuously, reaching all-time highs in the 21st century. Though it was traditionally a method of stretching your dollars, today there are additional reasons compelling consumers. One growing motivation is sustainability. According to a survey conducted in 2019 by Raymond James Financial Inc, 15 percent of people participating in this 200-billion-dollar industry do so because it is environmentally friendly. With the growing sense of alarm about global warming, embattled ecosystems, strangled turtles, and the all-around human fuckery of the planet, lots of people have embraced recycling.

New language has emerged, making this sort of shopping more attractive. It is even considered a hobby. A passion. “Used” has become “previously-loved.” “Old” has become “vintage.” “Castoffs” and “hand-me-downs” have become “rebirth fashion.” And spending hours checking article by article of clothing to find the ones that fit best but aren’t ripped or sweat-stained has become “thrifting”. It’s like a challenge to be won – the victors go home happy, their bags bulging and their conscience intact.

So there are plenty of legitimate reasons to excuse yourself from one of the common experiences in our modern, western society: a quick shopping trip to the mall, complete with dizzying stacks and rows and piles and displays of the identical, pristinely presented garments.

Treat yourself with a new outfit, you deserve it. 

No thank you, a new generation is shouting back, I’m going to find something previously-loved instead.  

My brothers and I never had jobs as kids and as far as I was concerned this was one of the major clues that we were secretly rich.

“He just doesn’t want us to know,” I’d whisper to my older brother as our dad hunched over a pile of bills in the kitchen, “so that we won’t end up spoiled.”

The other evidence of our clandestine wealth was there all through elementary school, revealed in my dad’s casual demeanor when he’d drive me to shop in Holyoke at the best mall our corner of Western Massachusetts had to offer. In the movies, the girls always argued with their mothers who would claim that those jeans are too expensive. “Please, mom!” they’d pout, “all my friends are wearing them!”

But not my dad. “You picked a shirt?” he’d ask when I’d come looking for him. He’d be sitting on a bench outside the store reading a book. “Great! Why don’t you get more in other colors?” I’d skip back in and grab a few more. When I was done, he’d pull out his credit card and pay the cashier at Old Navy without even pausing to see what I’d picked or how much it cost.  My closet was filled with piles of identical items; they varied only in color.

When Reverend Edgar J. Helms identified a problem, he did his best to create a solution. In 1895 he was placed at Morgan Chappel in Boston’s notorious South End, and he was shocked by the poverty-stricken suffering of his mostly immigrant congregation. He began making trips to the wealthier communities and requesting their discarded belongings. Soon after, he fully embraced the “teach a man to fish” philosophy and compelled his afflicted congregation members to help with the collecting. Then, he taught them how to fix broken objects and mend ripped clothing. These items were given to the poor, often to the menders themselves.

In time, Helms developed the idea that these same items could be sold cheaply to create jobs and salaries for these same workers. In this he was a pioneer, for previously charities were not supposed to be money makers.

Now Goodwill Industries, a more than $5 billion nonprofit agency, has become a popular employer for the impoverished, for the uneducated, for the mentally challenged, for veterans, for any other group who could use a leg up.  In 2010, there was a branch opened in San Francisco that focused on hiring workers exclusively from the LGBTQ community.

Today, there are more than 3,200 Goodwill and retail stores worldwide. The clothing and household goods are left in drop-boxes outside the stores to be sorted by that branch’s employees. “GoodwillFinds.com” burst into the fast-growing industry of online secondhand shopping in 2022. Since Goodwill’s establishment in 1902, its mission has evolved and broadened. Besides continuing to employ and train vulnerable populations and provide affordable items for people with limited budgets, they now proudly wave the flag of sustainability.

I met Jen when I was seven through the Big-Brothers-Big-Sisters program which matched motherless daughters and fatherless sons with mentors. She was a pretty, 24-year-old medical-supplies saleswoman with blonde highlights and a quick smile. She took me swimming, to Friendly’s, and for countless walks in the forest near my house. One day we found three 4-leaf clovers as we lay side by side on a particularly fluffy patch of grass.

“You’re my lucky clover,” she’d said, or something along those lines. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

We used to play catch in my big backyard. Once, she took me to a circus. She taught me how to use a sewing machine. She brought me to her small attic apartment to help her decorate her Christmas tree. There, she warned me not to stomp so that the man living below her wouldn’t come up and yell. She won “Big Sister of the Year” when I was eleven but we didn’t attend the ceremony because it took place on Saturday, and my Jewish family doesn’t drive on the Sabbath. For her Saturday wedding a few years later, my dad and I stayed in a hotel two miles from the chapel so that we could walk.

When Jen would take me shopping, my father’s gratitude was almost tangible. When we’d come home with bags on all four of our arms he’d ask her how much he owed her and would enthusiastically pull out his checkbook. I wonder if he was tempted to tip her for her efforts, for relieving him of this particular chore.

I remember being quite pleased to romp through the mall with Jen, stopping at Old Navy, the Gap, and JCPenney, finding pretty things. Sometimes, we’d duck into Joannes to pick up supplies for an art project we could do together later. Always, we’d stop for ice cream at the Friendly’s in the corner of the food court on the ground floor.

Almost three decades later, Jen claims that I did not enjoy shopping. That she remembers taking me to CVS more than anywhere else. That we went to Macy’s to search for an outfit for my bat mitzvah but were unsuccessful. I don’t know why we’d remember this so differently. But I do like this image of immature and innocent me, rejecting shopping in favor of activities like combing through the grass to find reminders of how very lucky I was.

Growing up in a residential neighborhood, the Goodwill on Sumner Ave was the only store I could reach on foot. It was a ten-minute walk, mostly along the edge of Forest Park. I loved going. I would enter the store from the back and slowly make my way through the furniture and household items section. I usually paused to look through the books on the back right wall of that first room, sometimes dropping one into my cart, before continuing into the store’s main space.

The clothes were organized into general categories. Men’s, women’s, kids’: coats, pajamas, long sleeves, short sleeves, lingerie, hats. Sometimes within a certain category, articles were ordered by color. It is a silly organizing principle when each article of clothing is so different from the next. But it sure made the hunt easier if you were dressing up as the devil or knew that you look fabulous in green.  

After I moved away, Goodwill was a stop I made whenever I came home to visit. In between seeing old friends, dutifully attending a service at synagogue, and making a quick stop at the cemetery, I always made it over to Goodwill. Over time, it became the year’s central shopping trip – for many years, it was my only shopping trip. Memories of malls and first-hand stores became distant, almost nostalgic childhood recollections. When I did have a pressing need that my friends’ castaways couldn’t meet, I’d seek out a local secondhand, albeit inferior, option to the Goodwill at home.

This wasn’t based on a specific ideology although I liked that I was minimizing my ecological footprint. It wasn’t penny-pinching even though I felt I had better things to do with my money than buy clothing. It was a simple, gut-desire to wear things touched and loved by other humans combined with an extreme aversion to the cold, cloned products of regular stores. When my Goodwill closed a few years ago I was sad, and I still miss it every time I visit home.

Nobody has had to fill in for me and take my kids shopping. My oldest turned seven recently, and, for now, she is more than happy with the bags of previously-loved hand-me-downs we receive from friends, augmented by the occasional gifts from visiting relatives. The one small exception was at the end of August last summer. Our days were filled with nervous anticipation for first grade at her new school.

While the school had no policy about specific uniforms, the local rules demanded that kids show up with plain shirts, no print, with the school’s logo stamped on. We entered one of the stores in the same neighborhood mall where I’d once exchanged a sweater for a navy-blue shirt. There were stacks of plain, printless shirts, waiting for kids to show up to choose their colors, cuts and size. They may have been folded at some point, but the shelves were a mess, sleeves and necklines drooping down, the sizes all mixed up.

“Wow, the colors are so pretty! How many can I have? I want the pink,” she said. “And the blue. And the purple.”

“There are different cuts,” I answered. “Let’s try on this v-neck and if you like it, choose a few colors. Also, let’s try on this looser cut, I think it will look nice, and you can choose a couple of those too. If you like it.”

“Okay!” she said, “Where do I try them on?”

My eyes darted to the arrows pointing towards the fitting rooms.

“You can try them on here, it’s okay. You’re still young enough.”

And she turned towards me with big, trusting eyes and pulled her shirt over her head. “Give me the pink v-neck,” she commanded.

“No problem, Sweetheart,” I said, “whatever you need.”