Goodwill Hunting

Not the movie-the store.  I’m going to admit something here that may end up in me becoming blacklisted by my SLP blogger buddies.  I’m new to the Goodwill therapy supply shopping game.  I’ve been practicing for 15 years, but have mostly avoided Goodwill and thrift stores (with the exception of Halloween shopping.)

I don’t want you to think that I’m a snooty SLP or that my yearly budget allows for only new State-of-the-Art-materials.  (Hahaha-did you get that yearly budget joke?)  I’m an expert Target end-cap shopper.  For years, I had a formula for the day Target marked all of their Christmas toy clearance items to 75% off.  (It was the third Tuesday, I think-but then they changed it….)  I would even take the morning off so I could get the BEST toys.

So you’d think that I would have been hip to the Goodwill shopping game.  Instead, I missed out on years of bargain shopping due to some misconceptions.

I really, really would like to be that cool, hip girl who wears AWESOME clothes that she buys at thrift stores.  I’ve bought a few things from various stores but I always feel like there might be bugs in the clothes and sometimes they smell and I just can’t get them cleaned.  The truth is that I’m laundry impaired.

Also, I thought that all of the games at Goodwill would be missing pieces.  (Not true.  and they even have a return policy!)

I ended up stopping at a Goodwill last Spring to look for a out-of-print game that was selling on ebay for 75.00.  Seriously, is anyone SO desperate for Cariboo that they would pay that much for it?  Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of Cariboo games at Goodwill.  And I have to read myself a little social story.  “Kelly, Cariboo is a really fun game.  You have 2 Cariboo games at your house.  2 games is a lot.  Other families might want to play Cariboo.  Everyone is happy when you let other people buy Cariboo games.”  

I ended up finding 5 other games, plus the piece de resistance: Flamingo Bingo for 1.99.

What?  A 44.00 Speech therapy material for 1.99????  I was hooked.  Anyhow, I went out with my  little guy this weekend and we found these great games for under 2.00 a piece PLUS 25% off whatever fit in a bag.  (Which isn’t very much since games are kind of big…)   First, I found a portable photography studio.  You can tell that I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

I got Battleship to work on slow and easy speech with a Fluency client.  The unfortunately named, Toss your cookies looked like a fun game.  And I think the flower puzzle will be great for a Spring activity and maybe even as a duration map.  The next one isn’t a Speech therapy activity, it’s a game you play with your dog!  This cracked me up, so I’ve been trying to play it with my little MinPin, Maxx.

What great buys have you found at Goodwill or another thrift store?