I am increasingly getting into buying gently used items and selling our gently used items. Aside from the expense, I just feel a certain moral imperative to try to reduce the amount of new things we purchase, thereby (hopefully) resulting in less waste of resources.
For the most part, I buy the kids' clothes at consignment sales. We bought N's bike this summer second hand from Schwinn. My birthday purchases were at Plato's Closet for jeans (how wonderful...to buy $20 Abercrombie jeans that are already comfortably broken in, so I don't have to do it). And a number of the kids' Christmas presents are in their second lifetimes.
Now, my dilemma (well, that is exaggerating; let's call it a slight concern):
I really love Half-Price Books, a store that sells gently used or brand new overstock books. You generally can't find the bestsellers there, but I am always able to find something that I want to read. And it is an awesome place to buy kids' books. I can get Barbie, Disney Princess and Strawberry Shortcake books there for usually a $1 or more less than what I would spend at Borders. And they have bookcases packed with clearance books....like $.25 books. Heck, even if we only read it once or twice, it is well worth a quarter.
So since I am more and more into reduce/reuse/recycle, I thought I would purchase gift cards at Half-Price books for N's preschool teacher, as well as her dance teacher. But I wonder if they would be insulted if I get them a gift card to what is essentially a book consignment store?
When I was a teacher, I was thrilled to get gift cards to anywhere. There are only so many "Best Teacher" ornaments and tchotchkes a person can have without having to rent storage space. It was so, so nice to get even a $5 card to Kroger or Wal-Mart.
And her dance teacher is young, like 15. I thought about a gift card to McDonald's, but I don't really want to encourage unhealthy eating. And I thought about just giving her cash, but I kinda want to support the economy.
So, faithful or unfaithful readers, what do ya think?
4 comments:
I already left a comment on your facebook note, but I think it's a great idea. I once wrote an entire, really long post about gifts for teachers and gift cards are one of the best things to get!
Another teacher here saying gift cards are great. They are what Grace's teachers will be getting. A.C.'s will be getting cash. Maybe for the dance teacher you could do a gift card to Target. My niece is 13 and said Target clothes are viewed as cool by teens.
Susan
I think it's a great idea! Unless you happen to KNOW the person has a problem with half-priced books, I wouldn't worry about it. I know TONS of people who almost exclusively buy books from there.
I'm a little late weighing in on this, but I say go ahead and get the Half-Price g.c.'s. If the teacher likes to read, she won't care where she gets her books. If she doesn't like to read, it wouldn't matter if it was from Borders or Barnes and Noble anyway...
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