How to Add Thrift Store Finds to Your Home – Without Buyer’s Regret!

Do you love hunting through thrifts stores, flea markets, garage sales and estate sales for good used items to add to your home? Do you sometimes find yourself buying items that catch your eye in the moment but then once you get them home, you have no idea what to do with them? In this post, I’ll be sharing how to add thrift store finds to your home in a way that works for you and your home so that you’re less likely to experience buyer’s regret.

One person’s trash may be another’s treasure but the items we find when we bargain hunt for used items are only treasures if they add something of value to our homes and our lives and don’t just become that much more clutter.

To help you do that, I’m going to share some of my recent thrift store finds, explain why I bought them and how I’ve already used them or how I plan to use them.

How to Add Thrift Store Finds to Your Home

Most of my recent finds have been for the kitchen and dining room but if you’ll continue scrolling, you’ll see my most favorite of all my trash to treasure finds since the time I found a drop leaf table that had been placed out on the curb on garbage day. Dave refinished it for me to use as a cutting table for my sewing room.

I’ll start with these pretty vases because it’s obvious what they’ll be used for.

The purple metal vase I bought specifically to hold our Easter branches. I chose it for the bright pop of color it brought to the table but also because it was metal. That made it perfect for holding the rocks I placed in the bottom of the vase as a weight to keep the Easter branches from tipping over.

The floral vase will be used through the year to hold cut flowers like this bouquet of spring flowers. It’s also decorative all on it’s own so it won’t need to be tucked away in the cabinet with the rest of my vases.

The white bowl has been added to my collection of serving bowls.

I like to have a variety of different platters to serve appetizers and main courses and it’s nice to have them at different heights, so this footed platter made it’s way home with me.

You can see it in use in my recipe for Lamb Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms.

The turkey soup tureen is my second favorite of my recent thrift store finds!

Now you may be thinking, just how practical, Sue, was it to buy something that will only get used a few times a year at most? How often does a person serve turkey soup, anyway?

First let me say that not everything that you bring into your home, whether it’s from a regular retail store, thrift store or even something purchased online needs to be practical? Not at all!

I’ll be the first to admit that not everything I bring into our home is practical. How boring would that be!

But it should be something that adds value to your home, if only because it makes you smile and adds to it’s beauty.

In the case of the turkey tureen, it definitely makes me smile. Plus it looks great with the turkey platter Dave and the kids gave me years ago.

But it’s also going to be practical. Let me explain.

In the first photo of the turkey tureen, it would appear to be a single use item for serving turkey soup but as you can see in the two photos below, once you take the lid off, you actually have four items that can be used in various combinations. 

The turkey topper could be used as a table decoration in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. And since in our house, we celebrate both Canadian and American Thanksgiving, it will be used twice as often.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas Days, I’ve decided that it will be perfect to serve the stuffing in. How fun will that be to carry in and place on the table!

So that takes care of it’s use for the holidays.

Then during the cooler months of the year, the plate, bowl and ladle can be used to serve soup when we have family and friends over.

The bowl itself is large enough to serve spring and summer salads when we have company over for BBQs.

And the plate on it’s own is a good size for serving meats or appetizers.

So the next time you see something like this turkey tureen that would appear to only have a single purpose, think of other ways you might be able to use it.

Now we come to that item that I mentioned earlier in this post that is my favorite of all my recent thrift store finds.

Granted, it may not look like much in the photo below. In fact, I’ll admit that the stool has definitely seen better days.

It needed a thorough cleaning and new upholstery just to make it halfway presentable.

But it was this hidden storage compartment that got the wheels turning for how a $6 stool could be turned into something completely new while at the same time solving two problems in my sewing room.

To see the transformation this stool underwent, click through and read How to Make a Thread Storage Stool. 

I also hope this post on how to add thrift store finds to your home helps you when you’re out scouring thrifts stores, flea markets, garage sales and estate sales to think about how those items will be used and whether they’ll just be adding clutter or will instead be a wonderful new addition.

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