Home decor thrift store haul with The Salvation Army

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What do seashell lamps, palm tree pillows and expensive dinner plates all have in common? They can all be found at your local Salvation Army Family Thrift Store! 

In this video, Major Julie Brown takes us through a condo she decorated using items purchased from The Salvation Army Family Thrift stores.

Watch to see all of the great things you can find when shopping at The Salvation Army Family Thrift stores!

Below is a transcript of the video edited for readability.

Major Julie Brown: Hi, I’m Major Julie Brown and I am the Director of Special Services at the Adult Rehab Centers command office. 

We have this condo and it was pretty bare when I walked into it, and I was tasked with the job to decorate it with items from our thrift stores throughout our territory. Since it’s close to the beach and in California I thought, “Well we’ll just go with the beach theme.” 

Now, I’m going to show you all the great things that I found at the Salvation Army thrift stores. This was a fun room to do. I decided to keep the original rug and I worked from those colors. These two little chests here came from our Stockton store and that was a great find. I liked the palm tree because it just sort of made the whole room. The welcome sign I think just tops it off so when you first walk in it’s welcoming it’s inviting. 

This [plastic dolphin figurine] I can’t believe I got but I did because I looked at it first and I said it’s just an old plastic thing, it’s probably cheap…but then when I turned it over and it’s a Lennox and I thought, “wow!” 

So, now we’re in the living room area. I first found that picture and then I was able to get the pillows and stuff to match. I needed something to sit on this coffee table. I didn’t want something that could fall over or break because it’s cushion and so I just thought I’d stick some shells in that, and it just makes it pop and it looks real great. 

Over here we have the china hutch. I loved working on this one. So, I found this nice China here, can you believe it? We got this at our San Diego thrift store. Even the bowl had the seashells in it. If someone wanted to throw on a nice dinner they had some nice seashell dishes and the salad set. Same thing if you’re having hamburgers, you can put you know, the pickles, the onions, tomatoes… This is a nice one that came from our Seattle store. I would put some kind of dips in it. 

Now we’ve come into the master bedroom and all these pictures even though they look like they’re all together really I picked them up at different thrift stores, except for those four little ones. The palm tree over there that’s another fun piece. I cleaned it up and took each limb out and cut them short and made it fit in the room because it just fit with the picture on the bed.

This is the guest room. I got the bedspread first and then worked my way out from there. I thought this was cute. I made it the little Wi-Fi information and so it has the seashells in it. Then I hope whoever stays here, it just feels like they’re at the beach and they can just relax and just be still. 

These pictures were great find I like the way they look like windows. This is one of the best finds for this room. Not only is it just nice and comfy you can raise this up it has the plugs there any kind of plug you will need and then it also has the desk here that you can pull over or you can take it out and store it into the into the arm there, if you want. One of the things about this chair is when I got it they said it didn’t work, the electric thing didn’t work. We turned it over, we figured it out, got it to working and it just makes the whole room look neat. This is the patio area.

So, please go out to the thrift stores, see what you can find because there’s great deals to be found!

Do Good:

  • See more videos like this in our video feed.
  • See how The Salvation Army fights addiction.
  • You’ve probably seen the red kettles and thrift stores, and while we’re rightfully well known for both…The Salvation Army is so much more than red kettles and thrift stores. So who are we? What do we do? Where? Right this way for Salvation Army 101.
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