A how-to guide to the Goodwill Bins, Portland’s ultimate thrifting experience

It’s the ultimate thrifting experience. A sensory overload. A raw look at the effects of our fast-fashion throwaway culture.

And a place of mystique and chaos, if you don’t know the rules.

I’m talking, of course, about the Goodwill Bins.

Officially, these locations are called Goodwill Outlets, but among the bargain hunters and resellers who populate these last-chance stores, they are affectionately known as The Bins.

The Bins have no shelves or racks, just big, blue rolling bins (or, more accurately, tables) filled with piles of stuff for sale (mostly) by the pound. Shoppers swarm the tables picking for deals.

It’s a stark contrast from shopping at the 53 Goodwill retail locations in the Willamette Valley region. The Bins are the last place for items to be sold individually before being sent for scrap or salvage.

Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette

operates five outlet stores in Hillsboro, Vancouver, Milwaukie, Salem and Portland.

We recently toured the Northeast Portland Bins, near Portland International Airport, and spoke to store manager Mark Gormley and regional outlet manager Ed Unciano to find out how it all works.

Here’s what happens behind the scenes and how shoppers can make the most of a trip to The Bins.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The Northeast Portland Goodwill Outlet has a 50,000-square-foot retail space. Behind it is a 100,000-square-foot warehouse where donated goods are received and processed.

The warehouse is stacked with thick, cardboard crates that are about 4-feet square and filled with either “hard lines” (toys, housewares and appliances) or “soft lines” (clothes and fabrics).

The sheer quantity of stuff is staggering – imagine that final warehouse scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Long rows of crates – more than 6,000 in this warehouse alone – are stacked four high.

Behind the scenes at the Goodwill Outlet, aka “The Bins” in Northeast Portland. April16, 2025.

Beth Nakamura

Most of these crates contain overstock that will be shipped out to surrounding Goodwill retail stores in winter months, when donations slow and stores struggle to keep their shelves stocked.

An item spends up to four weeks for sale at a Goodwill retail store, with the price cut in half for the fourth week. A product that hasn’t been sold after about a month is sent to the nearest Bins store, where it ends up on the per-pound sales floor.

Every day, 60-90 cardboard crates of unsold retail items arrive at the Portland Bins alone, Gormley said. Those crates are mechanically lifted and tipped over blue rolling tables. The products tumble out of the boxes, which explains the jumbled and sometimes broken state of items at the Bins.

A section of the Goodwill Outlet in Southeast Portland, also known as “the bins” is shown here on July 8, 2015.

Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

ON THE SALES FLOOR

The Portland Bins has a sales floor of 108 tables. Each table is rotated out with fresh wares at least four times a day. The figure is even higher in the busy summer months.

“We probably increase our table rotation by about 15% because we have to keep the stuff moving because there’s so much of it coming in,” Gormley said.

That translates to nearly 450 tables of stuff, per day, cycled through the sales floor at this location alone.

PRICING

Pricing is standard at all Columbia Willamette Goodwill outlets: “Soft lines” are $2.79 per pound, or $1.59 per pound if you purchase at least 25 pounds.

“The breakeven for that is about 13 pounds,” Unciano said, “so anything over 13 pounds, you should just get 25 pounds.”

Electronics and glassware are 79 cents a pound.

Media are priced individually: Hardback books are $2.79 a piece, paperbacks are $1.59, CDs and vinyl records are $1.29, and DVDs are $2.29.

Furniture also is priced individually, with the prices lowered every couple of days that something hasn’t sold.

“Depending on what the piece of furniture is, it probably doesn’t last more than maybe three to six days,” Gormley said.

Everything is sold as-is, with no returns, exchanges or fitting rooms.

THE REGULARS

Forget the mall: Today’s teens hang out at the Bins after school.

When Unciano first started working at the Bins about seven years ago, the clientele was older and mainly interested in housewares. These days, it’s flipped: Shoppers are younger and looking for clothes.

Unciano estimated that about half of today’s Bins shoppers are resellers, who spend entire days at the store. (This is why you will rarely find a free shopping cart after 8 a.m. They’ve all been snagged and will spend much of the day in use by the same shopper.)

Jake Beukelman travels to Portland from Hood River three to four times a week to find clothes that he resells under the Instagram handle,

“Search for Rags.”

He looks for “old ’90s graphic tees, western wear, anything that has some cool wear to it,” he said. “I discovered the Bins probably five years ago, when I was in high school. That’s right when there was a big jump, and all these kids were showing up to the Bins.”

Behind the scenes at the Goodwill Outlet, aka “The Bins” in Northeast Portland. April16, 2025.

Beth Nakamura

THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

Goodwill Outlets are open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, but regulars arrive before the doors open to be the first inside. Some used to arrive as early as 4 a.m., Beukelman said, marking their place in line by leaving an object outside the front entrance, then napping in parked cars. But a few months ago, Goodwill changed its policy, requiring shoppers to physically stand in line to hold their spot. As a result, most regulars now start showing up closer to 7 a.m.

When tables are wheeled off and onto the sales floor, employees call out “taaables, taaables” to clear the way. That’s the cue for shoppers to circle the new tables and claim a shopping spot.

The biggest shopping rule at the Bins is this: No one can touch anything until all tables in one section are in place.

Etiquette also demands that you not reach beyond your immediate shopping area to grab something on a table.

“ You can look, and you can say to the person next to you, ‘I really want that,’ but you cannot touch it,” said shopper Amy Sacquety.

Conflicts can sometimes arise when two people reach for the same item.

“Watch and learn before you do anything,” Sacquety suggested. “There’s a social etiquette to it, and people will get really upset with you if you don’t follow the social etiquette.”

Behind the scenes at the Goodwill Outlet, aka “The Bins” in Northeast Portland. April16, 2025.

Beth Nakamura

AFTER THE BINS

Items that don’t sell at the Bins are sorted for salvage buyers.

“Our goal is to recycle everything that we can,” Unciano said, “even down to salvage metal, even if it’s a penny. We try and sell everything that we can.”

Goodwill has salvage buyers for all kinds of specific things: toys, electronic wire, pots and pans, keyboards and Christmas lights.

Clothes and textiles are bundled into 1,000-pound bales and sold at a going rate of about 10 cents per pound. Textiles might be reused or shredded for insulation or stuffing products.

Goodwill of the Columbia Willamette says it sells or recycles 83% of all items it receives as donations. The rest — primarily certain plastics and wood furniture — is sent to landfills.

OTHER SHOPPING TIPS

– Gormley suggests Bins shoppers wear sturdy gloves. While staff are tasked with removing sharp and potentially dangerous items from tables before they hit the sales floor, sometimes they miss things.

– In years of causal Bins shopping, I have never once gotten a shopping cart. Gormley said the stores are planning to increase the number of carts, but if you aren’t among the first to arrive, don’t plan on snagging one. Bring a large carrier bag, like an

Ikea Frakta bag

, for your Bins haul.

– Floor staff take their lunch break from 10:30 to 11 a.m., which means there are no table rotations at that time. Regulars know this. That makes it either a good time to take a shopping break, or a good time to have a less-crowded shopping experience.

– Plan to spend a good part of your day at the Bins. It’s easy to lose track of time when every new table rotation could hold a treasure.

WHERE TO SHOP:

Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette has five boutiques, 53 retail stores and five outlets. Outlet locations are:

• 
  Portland: 5950 N.E. 122nd Ave.
  
• 
  Milwaukie: 1740 S.E. Ochoco St.
  
• 
  Hillsboro: 2920 S.E. Century Blvd.
  
• 
  Vancouver: 9025 N.E. 117th Ave.
  
• 
  Salem: 3235 Portland Road N.E.
  

Stories by

Samantha Swindler

• Portland museum presents Sasquatch through Indigenous cultural lens

• This Portland thrift store, hidden in a church basement, is celebrating 50 years

• Jade District restaurants honored in new digital archive launched by APANO

• Tribal casino near Pendleton bets big on its future with $100M expansion

• In Oregon’s kite capital, this shop is a flyer’s delight

About The Author