The WasteShed — Local services in Jefferson Township

The wasteshed is, hands down, my favorite retail location/experience in chicago. I have been a customer for many years, since they opened their first location, and it is consistently a magical experience to enter and comb through the wealth of secondhand art materials, all of which are always fairly priced (clearly a good amount of time is spent sorting and assessing value for lightly-heavily used items), eclectic (from textiles to printmaking to paint to scrapbooking and more), and staff is always friendly, welcoming, and also obviously super cool. You might find a vintage speedball linocut set, or a set of Pokémon stickers from the original 1998 US release, or a pristine 70’s block-printed tablecloth, or just the exact shade of prismacolor brush tip you’ve been looking for, lightly used, for 50 cents. There are usually some free materials available for teachers which is awesome, small exhibits of the work of local artists, and over the years, an eclectic variety of events hosted in the evenings. Comparable used art supply centers I have visited are the Indigo Hippo in Cincinnati and the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland. Every city should be so lucky as to have a WasteShed- it’s...

I’m so glad that the Waste Shed exists! I almost always find some good stuff when I pop in to look around. Also most of the staff is super friendly and welcoming!

-1 star because it’s unnecessarily difficult to determine when they’re open. The hours posted outside of the business don’t match the hours on their website which also don’t match the hours on Google. For some reason, the hours posted on Google are more frequently the correct hours. I’d suggest calling before you head over just to be doubly sure that they’re really open at the specific location you intend to visit. On more than a few occasions I’ve driven to the store fully believing them to be open for normal business only to find that...

Amazing place. Happened to wander in because I was in the area and was looking for some fabric. They have a wide selection of materials for all different mediums - film, screen printing, sewing, crochet, etc.

Even though most things there are used or donated, it does not feel like you are wading through junk like you do in some thrift stores. Instead, you really have the sense that everything is thoughtfully curated and organized. And the prices are extremely low, especially compared to Blick or Artist and Craftsman when they were still around.

I really wish I had known about this place when I was a student! I’ll definitely have to stop back the next time I start a...