I found myself in an op shop most days when I was young. I stopped by to help a friend close up, the bell ringing as I opened the door, flipped the sign and started on a familiar path. I would eye the spines of the books, gaze at the dark folds of menswear and squat over milk crates of vinyl. I didn’t always know what I needed from that shop. It was a ritual, and I was searching.
I was a student, working as a janitor, living in a crowded house. The op shop ritual helped with things I couldn’t otherwise afford: clothes for an interview, a toolkit, the bag I took to class. The things I found were useful and needed as I made my way into adult life.
“Did we ruin op shops?” My old friend practically shouts over the phone. They no longer work in an op shop, but the complaint felt familiar. I can’t find anything good any more. It’s all too expensive. These stores seem so empty. Where’s the weird stuff?
Many secondhand retailers have been professionalised in recent years, the op shops of old seeming to have faded away. I find myself, a 42-year-old man, standing in these places wondering, is there anything useful left to find?
Now many of the old stores are closed. There are for-profit international thrift store chains and the not-for-profit secondhand retailers seem increasingly modernised. It feels like there’s less stock available, and it’s more selective.
I think of the darkened op shops of old – the church basements, the sheds, the tip shops. I found useful things there, but I also found the weird, the joyful. I bought a record collection for a dollar a piece and a century-old edition of Little Women. I found creepy antique dolls. I step into a newer store and see orderly rows of common items, resellers scanning the racks with image-recognition technology on their phones.
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Those old shops felt chaotic, outside time and liminal spaces for liminal phases of life. There, I found the women’s costume jewellery I wore in goth night clubs as a teen, the jacket I wore to look professional as a writer in a new city and toys for my baby after I moved back home. Op shops supply for rite-of-passage, and I wasn’t just looking for old things to use but finding new ways to live. We use things to make meaning. Op shops sell us possibility.
It has been a year of growing pains and grief. I have buried milk-teeth in pillows, faced my father’s funeral. There are friends I no longer know, parts of myself I can never be. I have reached that strange age when fewer things are possible, when life isn’t just about finding things, but losing them.
The fact is that disruptive times have affected secondhand retailers, too. People don’t donate as they once did, increasingly reselling or swapping their valuable items. Op shops can face increasing overheads, not to mention the cost of moving unsellable donations. Many also rely on volunteers, a demographic that has declined during the cost-of-living crisis.
Many secondhand retailers fundraise for social services, from food insecurity to animal welfare. They serve a purpose and build community (not just provide bargain dopamine hits for members of the consumer class in existential crisis). Op shops are cleaner now and more accessible. I see people walking out of these places with boxes of useful things, things they need. Things I already have.
Are op shops ruined, or have they just changed with the times? As all things do, as perhaps I should as well? I take some things I no longer use and bury them in a box: clothes that no longer fit, books I won’t finish (though not my century-old Little Women). Whatever I’m looking for, it’s time to let old things go. I can’t make my way forward while still holding on.
The op shop of my younger years is still there, though things have changed. I lay my box at the counter but decide against the old ritual of searching. I have everything I need. Perhaps making our way through adult life isn’t just about the grief of losing things but the joy of giving them away too.
When we’re young, we search for who we are. We can lose that with the passing of time – when the path becomes less familiar. The bell rings as the door closes behind me. Sometimes, new meaning comes from letting go.