How to shop the “Stuff a Bag” sale every Monday and pay $15 for an entire bagful

Whether you’re a Goodwill regular or a first-time shopper, chances are you shop at our stores because you’re thrifty and like a good deal. We’re here to let you know about a little-known deal in our stores called Stuff A Bag. 

Stuff A Bag is a weekly sale in Goodwill Northern New England stores. On Mondays, you can fill a bag for only $15. If you buy two bags, you get another bagful for free. The sale applies to a different color tag each week and is one way Goodwill gives stuff a second chance. 

The sale includes clothing and household goods. When we stuffed a bag recently, we fit three shirts, a sweater, a pair of shoes, two books and still had a little room leftover. You can get crafty with how you make things fit.  

We have signs in stores and a sales calendar on our website to help determine which color tag to shop for. 

The best part of Stuff A Bag is knowing you’re helping the environment and your community. Shopping and donating to Goodwill NNE funds our mission of helping people achieve their work and life goals.  

How does it work? 

Grab a store-provided paper bag and great ready for the fun to begin.

Next, look for things to stuff your bag with – but make sure they have the right color tag. If they’re able to, staff will sort clothing to make it easier for shoppers. But searching for the right color tags is half the fun! 

Lastly, stuff your bag. Head to the register to cash out and enjoy your thrifted items! It’s really that easy.

What happens to items that don’t sell? 

By the time an item is eligible for Stuff A Bag, it has been on the floor for five weeks.  

Here’s how it works, from the beginning: Donated items are checked, sorted, priced and tagged with a specific color before being placed on the sales floor. If today all newly donated items are tagged with yellow price tags, that color (yellow) will go on sale in a few weeks — at first for 50% off, then for $1.50 an item, and then to this stuff-a-bag for $15 sale. 

We give each item several opportunities to be purchased before being sent to one of our Buy The Pound Outlet stores – where they get another chance at finding a home. There, the items that still did not sell, even after the stuff-a-bag events get sorted into large blue bins. Outlet prices are marked down significantly, allowing customers to pay by the pound, rather than paying for individual items.  

If items still don’t sell, we have a way to reuse or recycle almost everything; an item’s path depends on what it is. For example, we only accept gently used items, but sometimes a shirt has a tear. Instead of throwing away shirts or towels we can’t sell, we send them to our warehouse where they are cut up, turned into wiping cloths and sold to local boat builders and artists.