Creative reuse centers | THE best cheap craft supplies

The absolute BEST place to buy cheap craft supplies is a creative reuse center. Forget chain craft stores, if you want to really embrace the scrappy DIY spirit, a creative reuse store should be your first stop for the ingredients of your next project.

When you’re picking up a new craft, one of the biggest barriers can be the cost of supplies. Especially if you don’t know how much you like a certain craft yet, investing a lot of money in the materials you need can be intimidating. You probably also have supplies from past projects or hobbies that you don’t need anymore, too, and need to make space for your new hobby.

Creative reuse centers solve both these problems! Not only can you get craft supplies for cheap and save them from the landfill, but you can donate your unwanted craft supplies and pass the love on to other crafters!

This post is all about creative reuse centers, and where to find one near you!

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What is creative reuse?

Creative reuse is taking something that isn’t being used and giving it a new life! A creative reuse center is almost like a thrift store for craft supplies. They’re wonderlands of fabric, yarn, paper, stamps, wood, metal, plastic, drawing supplies, and more! I’ve even seen floor looms, old pianos, and vintage sewing machines at my local one!

These centers get usable craft supplies from community donations (both from individuals and businesses) and sell them for incredibly cheap. I’m talking a fat quarter of nice quilting fabric for $0.75 cheap. For those of you who aren’t sewists, that’s like 1/3 the price you’d pay at a chain craft store!

My local reuse store even has a section where you can pay $5 to fill a 5-gallon bucket with as much as you want! Let me tell you folks, you can fit a lot of useful notions in a 5-gallon bucket.

Why you should support creative reuse centers

• Most of them are local & non-profit – Most craft reuse stores are local, meaning you’re giving money to your community, and non-profit! You rest easy knowing you’re giving to an organization that provides value to your community instead of putting money in pockets of Big Craft CEOs.
• They give back to the community – While some regular craft stores hold events, reuse centers are so much more involved with the local community! Many of them give free supplies to teachers, and hosts volunteer days where folks make things like bed liners for animals local shelters. Mine also holds cheap classes on a variety of crafting skills, and has scholarship funds available for folks who can’t afford to attend! How cool is that?
• They’re good for the environment – By reselling things that would otherwise get thrown away, these reuse stores save a huge amount of material from entering landfills. My local creative reuse center alone has saved over one million pounds of usable craft materials from landfills!! Not only is that less junk buried in the earth, that means the natural resources that would have been used to make those materials from new are saved, and the
• Reuse stimulates creativity – Not only is shopping at a reuse center great for the enviornment & community, it’s good for your brain! Thinking about how you’ll make use of the materials available to you there will force you to think extra creatively, and you’ll end up making things you never would have thought to before! As Orson Welles (supposedly) once said, “The enemy of art is the absense of limitations!”

Feel better about switching hobbies!

One of my favorite things about reuse centers is that you can donate your old craft supplies to them.

I used to feel so guilty when I moved on from a craft fixation and had loads of supplies sitting around doing nothing. “Someone could use this!” I’d think, “I can’t throw it out, and Goodwill won’t take this stuff!” So my closet slowly filled and filled with random craft supplies that I probably wouldn’t return to (at least not for a while).

Once I discovered my local craft reuse store, my approach to crafting totally changed. I embraced my hobby-hopping impulses fully, resting easy knowing that if I got rid of my backlog of supplies, they would go to someone who appreciated them.

And, if I ever decided to pick that craft up again, I could probably re-acquire similar supplies on the cheap at the reuse store, too! Win-win!

Reuse inspiration

To inspire you to get out to your local creative reuse center, here are a couple of projects I made using supplies from Austin Creative Reuse and what they cost me!

I would never have thought I could get the supplies for these projects so affordably!

Find one near you!

Here is a list of creative reuse centers in each state. This list is ever-growing—if you know about one that isn’t on this list, let me know in a comment ❤️