A few months ago, Winnipegger Michelle Bailey was helping her aging mother move out of her longtime home, which meant plowing through 30 years and 2,500 square feet of her parents' belongings to see what was worth keeping and what should be donated to charity.
"Every time we'd contemplate something, my brother would say 'take it to the self-help'. He said it so often we'd just chime in 'self-help, self-help,' every time he'd open his mouth," said Bailey, the communications co-ordinator at St. Amant. "It ended up being the joke of the day -- put it on the pile for the self-help!"
‘You name it, we got it,’ says Ben Kauenhofen, a volunteer at the Mennonite Central Committee ‘self-help’ store in East Kildonan.
That term -- the self-help -- means a charity thrift store. Like "nip" and "jambuster" it's a term peculiar to Winnipeg, which makes sense because Winnipeg has more than its share of second-hand shops.
For Bailey and her family, the self-help means the Salvation Army thrift stores.
But in rural Manitoba and among many in Winnipeg it means the thrift stores run by the Mennonite Central Committee. There are four of those in Winnipeg and one in nearly every small town in Manitoba, especially in the southeast.
Winnipeg has more self-helps than any other Prairie city, even booming Edmonton and Calgary. There are at least 16 chain stores such as Value Village and Goodwill, while Calgary has only nine. Winnipeg also has 20 or so independent consignment and "new-to-you" shops.
Second-hand store aficionados also know the cheap vintage finds in Winnipeg rival those in pretty much every city in Canada. Try finding an embroidered alpaca capelet for $3.99 in the cavernous and overpriced downtown Toronto Goodwill that's been stripped bare of anything worth buying. And good luck stumbling on a 1960s teak surfboard-shaped coffee table at any Vancouver second-hand store. That $1.99 commemorative plate decorated with the headshots of all the American presidents up to Gerald Ford? Only at the Value Village in the Maples.
Aficionados also know that the second-hand stores in Transcona often have the best finds. Skip the ones down Pembina Highway, because they are thoroughly picked over by savvy University of Manitoba students.
At the MCC store in East Kildonan, there are rows and rows of clothes, housewares, furniture and even some oddities.
"You name it, we get it," said Ben Kauenhofen, a volunteer at the Mennonite Central Committee store in East Kildonan. "Sometimes we get stuff in that we have absolutely no idea what it is. But towards the end of the day a customer has usually figured it out for us. And it always sells. It might take a couple of weeks, but there's a buyer for everything."
Kauenhofen said the store is often raided by theatre troupes looking for costumes, and store volunteers will give actors and other longtime customers a heads-up when something particular comes in they might like.
"Nothing is wasted," he said. "It's all recycled."
maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca
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