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If you have a child who loves to play pretend, you know that also includes dress-up time! When I was younger, I remember my brothers and I wearing blankets and sheets, making our own dress-up clothes as we played. I always wanted to be like the little girls in movies, sitting at a vanity covered in play jewelry and wearing toy kitten heels. So of course when my own daughters began to show interest in playing dress-up, I jumped at the opportunity to upgrade their pretend playtime. It seemed like a perfect moment to live vicariously through them to me! The only issue is, I now know why my mother never bought us any of those clothes: pretend play costumes are expensive!
Brands like Disney, Little Adventures, and even Melissa & Doug make excellent dress-up clothes for kids. I especially love outfits that are comic book or film-accurate! But unfortunately, these usually run $20-$50 per outfit. Instead of going broke filling up your child’s dress-up chest with these expensive outfits, you should do what we do and head to Goodwill instead.
Every year at the end of September or the beginning of October, Goodwill sets up their Halloween Shop. This is a great place to find seasonal home decor, costume accessories, and most importantly, costumes! It’s technically true that you can find great things to deconstruct and resew into costumes from Goodwill year-round, but realistically how many of us have that kind of time or skill?
Instead of getting crafty, each year my girls and I head to multiple Goodwill stores to search through the donated Halloween costumes for potential dress-up items. Unlike the brand new, name brand items, these costumes are typically priced between $5-$10 each.
Tips for Shopping at Goodwill for Costumes
Sizes can be hard to determine.
Usually, parents cut out or tear away the tags to avoid irritating their kids’ skin while wearing them. Because of this, determining the size/ sizing of costumes can be difficult. Without the option of trying things on (due to COVID), I usually try my best to eyeball things and make them work. But don’t worry too much, you can return things to Goodwill (for store credit) if they don’t work out.
Not all donations are created equally.
From the costumes I’ve searched through, I can tell that lots of children are wearing their costumes year-round. Goodwill generally displays costumes that are in good, but sometimes not great shape. Be prepared to use a needle and thread, and sometimes a safety pin or two to close some ripped seams here and there.
Wash before wear!
I would highly recommend you wash each costume thoroughly before letting your child wear them. It is my understanding that GoodWill does not wash their donations before putting them out on the floor for sale. Not all people go through the trouble of washing donations before dropping them off at the store, so to avoid any issues, go ahead and wash them anyway. And remember to hang all costumes to dry to help maintain their quality.
Go Early in the season!
I like to go weeks before anyone is even thinking about Halloween to make sure we get a good amount of costumes. This year I spent about $40 total and we walked away with nine costumes for my girls to share
Other ways to enhance your child’s pretend play
Unfortunately, all GoodWill stores are not created equally. If you are having trouble finding any good costumes at your location you can always try other methods. Dollar Tree has a nice selection of pretend play items, especially around Halloween. Check out this video I posted showing a good selection of the costumes my local store had to offer. If that doesn’t work, Amazon also has nice pretend playsets. These sets aren’t much cheaper than what you would pay in-store, but the two-day shipping makes it worthwhile. I would also be on the lookout for Black Friday deals since pretend play outfits and accessories make excellent Christmas gifts!
But even if you do pay full price, keep in mind that spending $40+ on a Halloween costume really isn’t that frivolous if your kids will wear that costume 50x over the next year. And with proper care, they can last a long time and be passed down to siblings, younger cousins, and maybe even grandchildren. I truly love watching my girls change into different characters to suit their mood or play theme of the moment. Their creativity inspires me and I will continue to foster it in any way I can, even if that means spending $50 on a Princess Tiana outfit from target!
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