My thoughts on op shops in Singapore

Op shops are great - people donate stuff they don't need, so that charities and non-profit organisations can sell them and raise funds for the needy.

Op shops stand for opportunity shops are great also because they give people a chance to own items that they might otherwise not be able to purchase at the higher prices at retail.

It also encourages a culture of recycling, decluttering and even just blessing someone else with things that are otherwise still very useful.

time to declutter!

As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure, giving away stuff you don't use might make someone else very happy, so why not?

It is unfortunate that second hand items sometimes have a certain stigma attached to them - because why should the fact that something was pre-owned put you off? It doesn't mean that you are lesser of a person. I think it makes you too cool to care!

Going through the items available in opshops allows you to get a glimpse into the lives of a wide myriad of strangers you probably will never meet. It encourages creativity, brings about the joy of hunting-gathering and basically is just another place to buy stuff - isn't that great alone?

peeking into another's world!

From personal experience, I find it unfortunate that the pricing done on the majority of items in opshops in Singapore are too high. Pegging the prices high, without consideration that the items really cost the charity nothing, discourages buying. I hope that I can somehow effect changes in the way opshops in Singapore are run - so that it really serves the main purposes I think they should stand for -
1. to provide the needy with a chance to own things they might not otherwise be able to afford; and
2. to generate turnover and therefore greater funds that can be directed to great humanitarian causes!

If prices are kept low, donations would pass through the charity shop much faster; and there would be more space for new donations to come in. Customers would be more willing to do repeat visits as new things would arrive all the time. Knowing that their donations are being purchased would also encourage people to donate even more things, instead of thinking that they would just sit in a shop for a long time, wasting away.

So, rich people might come in and buy stuff, so what? It should not feel like a deprivation of rights for the more needy, in fact, it would encourage a higher turnover of goods (op shops usually have a problem with storage of all the donations that come in!); and when the rich people have too many things, they would probably donate it to the places that they enjoyed shopping at so much, so it's really a win-win situation!

Anyway, hope this has given you a brief overview of op-shops! It is my dream to open up an op shop for a very worthy cause in Singapore, where I would be able to sell items to poorer people, giving them the joy of obtaining necessities, or even random purchases, without feeling like it's a hand-out. It would be ideal if my op shop would create a homely environment, where no judgement is passed and people are happy to donate, find and buy treasures old and new.