Seven Thrift Ideas for Your Wheel of Year Celebration

The Wheel of the Year sabbats are opportunities to pause and celebrate the changing of the seasons, both within and around you.  When you are just starting out, it can feel like you have to buy all.the.things in order to celebrate each sabbat properly. You may need certain items like candles or vessels, or fabric in a specific color that corresponds with that sabbat. Or maybe you are throwing a dinner party and need additional place settings and serving dishes. Thrift stores, charity shops and even yard sales are all great places to stock up on items for your Wheel of the Year celebrations. 

Anyone who’s been following along on my Instagram knows that I love thrift store finds. Most of my home decor is thrifted or second hand finds. I love thrifting because it's affordable and more sustainable than buying new. I can often find higher quality items than what is available in local box stores. 

Here are seven things that you can usually find for pennies on the dollar at your local thrift store:

Candles

I often find nice quality candles, new in the original packaging at my local thrift store. Candles are useful for altars, centerpieces or add a specialness to an ordinary day.  Imbolc especially embodies candles as part of its celebration.  

Dishes

A beautiful table doesn’t have to cost a lot of money (looking at you Pottery Barn).  I love (and I mean LOVE) picking up vintage dishes whenever I’m thrifting. I am especially partial to Blue Willow china because it’s easy to find and adds an instant charm to any meal. Plus it reminds me of Jessica Fletcher’s kitchen from Murder She Wrote.  

Along with place settings, I have scored most of my nice serving dishes from my local thrift store, including mixing bowls, various size platters, small serving vessels and pitchers.   

Table Linens

Along the same lines of thrifted dishes, thrifted table linens are an easy and inexpensive way to dress up your dinner table. Along with vintage tablecloths and napkins, I often pick up handmade doilies and dresser scarves to use throughout my house or on my altar, if I am setting one up. 

Picture Frames 

I love adding framed printable art and quotes to my seasonal decor.  It’s usually free or very low cost and easy to swap out as the seasons change. To make my thrifted frames look more cohesive, I’ll often give a mismatched collection a coat of spray paint. And whenever I find an oversized frame (bigger than 8x10) I’ll grab it, because they are harder to find and surprisingly pricy to buy new.  

Baskets

Woven baskets offer beauty and function for your entire house. I use them for holding bread on the dinner table, to store magazines or craft projects and corral clutter in my office. In the autumn, to celebrate Mabon, I like filling small baskets with dried flower bouquets from the garden and placing a larger basket of fresh red apples on our kitchen counter. 

Faux Greenery 

Not everyone has ready access or a budget for fresh flowers and greenery, especially in the winter months. Thrift stores are an excellent place for scoring gently used fake plants, picks and flowers. I use faux greenery to add a little color and texture to places in my house where real plants won’t make it, such as my kitchen which gets little direct sunlight.  For my Wheel of the Year celebrations, I will add faux greenery for sabbat decorations. 

Now, some might argue that using fake greens goes against the very essence of a nature based spiritual path. I argue that it is the intent that you have when using any item, real or fake. Plus I feel it's a bit elitist to assume that everyone can pick up a fresh bouquet of flowers for their Wheel of the Year celebration. I say do what you can, where you are, with what you have.   

Clothes 

Easily half of my wardrobe is thrifted. If you are looking for a special outfit for your Wheel of the Year celebration, thrift stores and consignment shops are a great place to look. ThredUp is another resource, if you don’t live near any good quality second hand clothing stores. I wrote a whole post on how to shop online for thrifted clothes. Buying second hand clothes is one of the best ways to avoid fast fashion and reduce the environmental footprint of your wardrobe.  

As you plan for your next Wheel of the Year celebration, I hope that these tips have helped inspire you. Be sure to visit the Member’s Library for Free Wheel of the Year Printables, calendars, art and more! 

How I Shop on ThredUp - and find great deals!

One of my favorite places to shop online is the second hand fashion site, ThredUp.  At first I was nervous about buying second hand clothes online, but after my first order I was hooked. The quality of the items and low prices were better than anything I could find locally. 

I live in a rural area and the clothes in our local thrift stores and consignment shops don’t offer a lot of variety, sizes or brands. There’s a lot of Wal-Mart and Old Navy clothing available and that’s about it.  Meanwhile, ThredUp offers ALL.THE.BRANDS. 

Just like in-person thrift shopping, online consignment shopping requires some strategy and skill to find the best deals. Here is how I use ThredUp to refresh my wardrobe each season. 

Several Thred-Up Items I bought over the past few months.

Start With a List 

While sometimes it’s fun to poke around and window shop online, I find this loosey-goosey approach leads to impulse buys of items I don’t really need or won’t actually wear.  So when I decide it’s time for a wardrobe refresh, I make a list of items that I need or want. While I may end up buying things not on the list, just like in a brick and mortar store, going in with some sort of plan generally keeps me focused and saves me money and time. 

Use the ThredUp Filters

 Thred Up has thousands of items. Literally, thousands. You could spend days sifting through all the available clothes and accessories. As someone who does not want to spend all day on anything, let alone shopping, I use the filters Thred Up provides to drill down to the items that I would be most interested in.  The filters I regularly include include:  

Size 

Depending on the brand of clothing, sizes can differ widely.  Generally more higher end items run much smaller than larger brands like Old Navy or Sonoma. So I select my main size, US XLarge and will go a size down and size up. This means my filter includes items that are listed as large, XLarge, and XXL/1x.  This ensures I get a good variety of choices for any items. 

A note about sizing up: For the longest time I avoided ever sizing up a dress size. As part of lifelong conditioning by the Western Toxic Diet Culture, I believed if I bought a size bigger than I thought I should be, I was conceding defeat and losing the battle to shrink my body.  For years I squeezed into medium dress sizes, telling myself that they would fit better when I just lost that last 5,10, 15 pounds. As a mid-sized woman, not only was I hella uncomfortable, it reinforced the idea that my body was something to be berated and hated and that if I wasn’t actively trying to shrink it or reshape it, I was lazy and undisciplined.  When I finally decided to jump off the diet wagon once and for all, I began buying clothes that actually fit me and were comfortable. Sometimes that is a size large, or, depending on the brand, an XLarge or even a 1x.  The sizes are simply guidelines for my body. They are not measurements of my worth as a person. 

Condition ( aka Wear & Tear) 

Thred Up gives you four conditions - Like New With Tags, Excellent, Good and Fair. I usually select Like New and Excellent. Most often I find that the prices on Good and Fair items are too high, for purchasing something that looks and feels second hand.  My exception to this rule is anything made of leather, because worn leather often looks better than new, and jeans, especially levi’s. Because broken-in jeans are the best, imo. 

Brand

I choose brands that I know will fit me well.  Many higher end brands, which I wouldn’t buy anyway, run really small. For example, an extra large from Tory Burch brand has a 34 inch chest! Brands I regularly buy on Thred Up include Ann Taylor Loft, Gap, Old Navy, Daisy Fuentes, Land’s End, LL Bean, Levi’s, and Apartment 9.   I feel like these brands fit most average sized women. 

Price

Just because ThredUp is a second hand clothing site doesn’t mean everything on it is cheap. It carries a wide range of high end fashion items that run into the hundreds of dollars. And while it may delight many shoppers to find such good deals on brands like xx or xx, my tastes run a bit more beer and burgers. I usually set the filter for under $50 for outwear, shoes and jeans and under $25 for everything else. This lower price point still gives me more than enough options to choose from! 

Color

I love this feature because it allows me to weed out any items that are in the wrong color. Generally, I wear the same palette of colors through most of the year.  This includes pink, coral (so I select orange in the ThredUp filter) yellow, green, black, white and blue.  I avoid purple, because it is not a color that I usually like to wear. Same with brown and gray, as they tend to wash me out. And while I like the color red, unless I am shopping for a holiday outfit, I tend to skip it. You can also filter by pattern or solid. 

Fabric

I usually filter fabric depending on the type of item I am looking for. For example, for summer dresses I like a lighter, breathable fabric like cotton versus wool or polyester. For worktops I prefer Rayon because they don’t wrinkle. 

So there you have it. A complete beginner’s guide to shopping on ThredUp! If you’d like some fashion inspiration to help you get started, especially if you are mid-sized or plus-sized, be sure to check out my fashion boards on Pinterest.