Thrift Store Christmas Decor - 5 Items to Shop For

Want to decorate your home for Christmas using unique and budget-friendly decorations? The thrift store is the place to look! You can find so many secondhand things to deck the halls with! I’m sharing 5 of my favorite things to look for at the thrift store to decorate with during the holidays.

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When you love to decorate for Christmas as much as I do (and like to switch things up), it can get expensive to create the look you want, year after year. I am a thrifter by nature, so looking at the thrift store for home decor comes naturally to me. Sometimes, though, it’s easy to forget to look for seasonal decor as well.

I wanted to remind you, though, to be looking for seasonal decor year-round, especially for Christmas decorations! You can often get them for a great price and find some unique pieces along the way!

One of the ways I like to save money on Christmas decorations is to buy items I can decorate with for the holidays, but that can serve as decor throughout the year as well. So, I’m sharing five of my favorite things to look for at the thrift store to use when decorating our house for Christmas.

There are a lot more things that I look for at the thrift store (hello, Santa mugs), but the five I’m sharing here are: readily available, can be used for decorating year-round, and work for lots of decorating styles.

I buy these glass jars or canisters anytime I see them at the thrift store. They are useful for so many more things than just for Christmas decorations! I have used them as a decorating tool year-round, as well as, for organizing in several rooms in our home.

For Christmas, I love filling them with my vintage Shiny Brite ornaments! I have more ornaments than I could ever fit on a tree (some are too fragile and I’d be afraid to hang them), so I love to display them in bowls, vases, and these glass canisters!

I have so many of the canisters that I actually just leave some of the decorations in them for storage, instead of taking them out each year. I like to be able to move the decorations to different places each year, or to photograph, and this makes it so easy!

I have also seen people create winter scenes in the glass canisters, with fake snow and reindeer. I always think they’re so cute, maybe this is the year I should make one! Thinking something like THIS.

Love the look, but don’t want to try and thrit them? These Anchor Hocking Heritage Hill Canisters are my faves and are so budget friendly!

I’ve been wanting to makeover some Christmas village pieces for years and have just never done it. I found these village buildings in the Spring when Jason and I were on a thrifting road trip. I loved the size of them (not too overwhelming), that they had a spot to put a candle (love the warm glow), and that they were 2 for $1.00! That’s a thrift store price that definitely fits my budget!

I debated what color I wanted to paint them. I thought about white, but most of the surfaces I wanted to display them on are white, so I thought they would sort of get lost. I decided to go with my tried and true pink, but in a bit more of a mature rose color. You can find the paint and paint brushes I used in my blog post of Easy Christmas Crafting Supplies!

The Hello Hobby chalk acrylic paint I used went on so well and covered great! I did have to do a second coat, but depending on what you’re painting over, you may be able to get away with only one coat.

This paint your own Christmas village set is small, but would be a great project your kids on Christmas break!

I’ve talked about this before, but there is no reason to be scared of buying “soft things” at the thrift store! Sourcing throw pillows, blankets, and linens secondhand is one of my favorite things. You can find so many amazing things at a fraction of the price that you would buy them retail.

One of the tricks is to buy things in a color scheme that you want to have in your home…not necessarily with a certain theme. I tend to have reds and pinks in our house year-round, so I can use blankets with these colors no matter the holiday, but they can especially be used for Valentine’s Day or Christmas. You can see how I used the Mexican blanket the Cooper is laying on, as a part of a past Valentine’s Day tablescape, here. It’s so versatile, even though you might not think so!

I love decorating with Mexican blankets! There are so many colors and patterns to choose from. These are great!

I don’t switch out a lot of art around the house for Christmas, but I thought it would be fun to add a little holiday cheer to our bedroom. This corner is always a tough spot for me to decorate, in general. There isn’t a lot of space, so I can’t fill it with too many things, but it looks empty without anytthing.

I had the idea to take some gift wrap pieces I had on hand and frame them in a couple of art frames with matting that I had bought at the thrift strore. I had the frames stashed away forever without a purpose, so they came in handy for this project!

I love the way the colors in the paper work with the colors of my vintage Shiny Brites! I also brought in some bottle brush trees to add more visual interest to the Christmas vignette.

You can find a variety of sizes of art frames HERE, if you can’t find what you need at the thrift store.

I spotted this little holiday light at the thrift store a couple of years ago and just knew it would be perfect for a project! I love to have lights all over the house—I think they’re perfect for adding a cozy feeling wherever you put them.

There’s nothing wrong with the original light, it’s just not my style, but I did love that I could fill it with, you guessed it, some vintage Shiny Brites! I used a bit of sandpaper and Doterra lemon essential oil to remove as much of the painted design on the outside of the light as I could. Then I taped off a line and painted the bottom of the light and the lid—love the bright color!

You could do this for any hoiday or even just for everyday decor, but I love the special pop for Christmas!

Any of these five items from the thrift store will make a fun and inexpensive update to your Christmas decorations! Some of them can even be used year-round, depending on the colors you find and use for makeovers.

One of the best parts of finding home decor at the thrift store is that it is unique. I love knowing that my house looks different from other people’s and that I created the design without spending a lot of money!

While I shared decorations with a focus on Christmas, you can take these ideas and use them for any holiday that you like to decorate for! A change in colors or elements that you add will make these thrift store home decor pieces work for your needs, even beyond holiday decorating!

I would love to see how you use these ideas for thrift store christmas decor! Share a picture in your stories on Instagram and tag me! You can find me on Instagram at @hilaryprall.