Hello everyone!
It has been almost a year since Thrifty Kids Closet opened and I thought I should share a little bit about myself here for those of you who don't know me yet. This is my first blog post ever so if it is a little bit everywhere, please forgive me!
My name is Meagan, I am a stay at home mom to my amazing, funny, and a little rambunctious 16 month old son, Liam. Prior to having Liam I was working in an administrative position for Metro Vancouver Regional Parks, I had previously been working in parks, specifically at Derby Reach in Fort Langley, both of which were my favourite job experiences in my life of work prior to Liam! I learned so many life skills, made a lot of great friends along the way and just genuinely loved the work that I was doing!
In July 2020, my husband and I found out we were expecting, we were so excited and nervous, but mostly excited! I have always wanted to be a mom, it's been my dream since I can remember and it was finally coming true! I had quite a few friends with kids, as well as a nephew, so I was already pre-disposed to how expensive children were but was still shocked when I walked into stores to buy items for this new little one!
I have always loved thrifting, at one point in my life I was thrifting women's clothing for resale but I got too busy with my day job and had to give it up. I remember before I even know that Liam was a boy, I started collecting clothes, I would pick up cheap marketplace lots and thrift whenever I had the free time. After having Liam in March 2021, I continued thrifting clothes even though I already had enough for him until he was three LOL (am I allowed to say lol in a blog post??)!
Fast forward to July 2021, I was struggling with PPD/PPA pretty badly, I was receiving help from a doctor but I was having a severe identity crisis. I needed to find something that didn't make me "just a mom". I impulsively bought a Cricut (and all the unnecessary accessories for it) thinking I could become more artsy and start making things to sell. I quickly gave this up after realizing how much space it was taking up in our 2-bedroom basement suite, I no longer had a living room to relax in! One afternoon, I was discussing with my mother-in-law my dream to one day open up a children's consignment clothing store, but knowing this goal was a lot bigger than just opening up a shop. We continued to discuss it and decided to start an online shop on instagram. We shared with our friends and in some Facebook groups and on August 7, 2021, we opened up shop!
August was slow, we gained quite a few followers but most of our business was close friends and family. September rolled around and we started getting new customers, things were really picking up for us! We were really starting to feel like our hard work was paying off, and business continued to go up from there! We made it through Christmas into the new year and I was planning the end of my maternity leave, I was scheduled to be returning to work at the end of February. I was dreading the idea of putting Liam into daycare, I had loved this time with him so much and the thought of losing pretty much 5 days a week of memories with him was devastating! With how successful the shop was, we realized that if I continued on this full time on my own, I would be able to make enough money to stay home with Liam, considering I wouldn't be spending all of my income on daycare, this was the perfect option for our family!
In January, my husband helped me transform our storage room into a half storage room, half shop and we moved all the products from my in-laws office into our storage room and at the beginning of February, I started flying solo! Things were so busy I just couldn't keep up with all the tedious parts of running an instagram shop, sending out order totals, collecting payments, etc. which is when I decided to create a website.
Fast forward to now, almost 11 months later and 5 months into having a website, I am sitting here typing this with Liam sitting right next to me on the couch snuggling (and also trying to press every key on the keyboard) feeling so grateful for this community and this opportunity to provide affordable, gently used baby and kids clothing to all of you!
If you have made it through all of this, thank you so much for all of your continued support! Each and every one of you are the reason I am able to sit here today writing this!
If you haven't already noticed, I am not good at making things short, I talk (and type) a lot! I've probably shared far too many unnecessary details, but I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about me, and how the shop started!
I hope you all have a wonderful, sunny day wherever it is that you are reading this from!
- Meagan