New Year, New Treasures!

Happy New Year

January is well and truly here…in fact, it’s nearly done! With the end of this first month of 2020 comes the beginning of another year here at Junktion. We love to take time off over the summer period to be with family and rest, but we are getting excited to welcome everyone back to our little corner of Adelaide come January 29th!

We hope you’ve also had time to collect yourself after 2019 and gear up for some exceptional opshopping! We all know that post-holidays are a perfect time to scour the thrift stores you love for pieces that weren’t there before. People have gigantic clean-outs, get gifts they don’t really need or have doubles of, or replace all their kids too-small clothing items.

Let’s Participate

An article by the ABC came up the other day giving a generalised timeline of how thrifting – opshopping – has really become an industry of its own since the 1960s. It’s less of a space for those down in their luck to get cheap, preloved items and more of an ethical, fashion conscious opportunity to showcase an individualistic style.

If you think about it, it’s true. How often do you go to an opshop because you really need a new tie and can’t afford one from BigW? Or your cutlery is outdated and you want to upgrade, but Harris Scarf aren’t having a sale? Rarely. We go to opshops more these days to participate in ethical fashion choices. We want to bypass what’s called ‘fast fashion’ – inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends (Oxford Dictionary). We want to keep clothing out of landfill sites, support the charities that run the stores and find those unique items that if we saw them full-priced in a mall we’d never even look twice.

Another rad reason to go to opshops is because it instills a sense of nostalgia in us. Who has ever been to one and picked up a bowl that your grandma used to have? Or found a set of earrings your mother wore on her wedding day? Or spied a tattered and dog-eared copy of Winnie the Pooh you read as a kid? That is one of the biggest draws – the thrill of never quite knowing what you might stumble across. Yes, sure – maybe your kid needs new shorts for school because they can’t seem to stop growing. And yes, the opshop might have them for only $1 – but there is a good chance you’ll walk out of that store with much more than a pair of school shorts!

That thrill, that ability to browse and not know what might catch your eye, is something we love to see in our customers. When you pop in for a coffee and a preloved item, we get to be a part of your opshopping journey. Maybe it’s us that have that old leather jacket like the one your dad used to wear, and then we get to hear a little of your story. Stories make up opshops and every time we buy something from them, we are intertwining our story with someone else’s. There’s a real sense of connectedness in purchasing second hand when you think about it!

Share Your Story With Us

So, will you share a little of your story with us this year? Will you come and grab a coffee or a sweet treat, and find something precious and new-to-you within our four walls? We hope so! We hope that our little corner of Adelaide holds a special place in your opshopping journey in 2020!

We can’t wait to see you!

-> check us out on Instagram @junktionats and Facebook and make sure you #shareyourstory