A Treasure Trove on Main Street

By Lea Zaharoni

Meet the people behind the consignment shop Buy & Consign Waltham, who divert furniture from landfills and redirect it back to the community. 

Behind Steve’s Pizza on Main Street and across from Market Basket is what some might call a gold mine. Buy & Consign Waltham is a 10,000 square foot warehouse of used goods, more vast than many would predict. 

The maze of furniture, books, physical media, tech equipment and clothing is managed by Lindsey Hickey and her small team of employees. They see up to a hundred customers a day, around half of whom come in regularly. All of them are on a hunt, though many do not know exactly what they’re hunting for. 

Buy & Consign was started by Clean Out Your House, a cleanout company founded in 2003. They take care of unwanted items, bringing what they can to be sold at Buy & Consign. Half of the profits from an item go back to the original owner. 

What can’t be consigned is donated, and nothing is thrown out. This is the main difference between Buy & Consign’s operation and companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who Hickey says “places your items directly into a dumpster on the back of a truck.” According to the EPA, in 2018, 80.1% of discarded furniture was landfilled, and only 0.3% was recovered for recycling.

Clean Out Your House delivers items from up to 25 estates per week to Buy & Consign in Waltham or at a second location opened in 2024 in Framingham, where staff sort, research, and price them. The store offers a win-win method of furniture disposal: the owner makes a profit and has the peace of mind that the item won’t end up in a landfill. 

Meanwhile, the buyer gets an item in good condition for a good price.  

The thrill of thrifting

Along with environmental benefits, Buy & Consign’s model addresses the financial concerns of new home buyers and renters facing “astronomically high” costs of living, as Hickey puts it. For many, new furniture is simply not attainable in a state with the second-highest cost of living in the US. Used furniture stores like Buy & Consign offer quality goods without the price tags or waste trends at fast-furniture stores like IKEA.

Over the course of Hickey’s five years as manager at the store, she’s observed a noticeable shift in the demographics of her customers. “Suddenly,” she said, “there are so many young people coming through the door.” 

This trend reflects not only financial concerns of young people, but a cultural shift toward vintage and one-of-a-kind items. Thrifting offers a different kind of shopping experience, where customers are tasked with searching through tons of disparate items to find the one that fits them. This often results in a sense of thrill, or a feeling of fatedness, when that perfect item reveals itself, Hickey said. 

She has experienced this firsthand. “One day,” she said, “I was going through boxes, and I said out loud to the team that I was looking for a jewelry box. The next morning, right at the top of a box I opened, was a sterling plate jewelry box with my three initials engraved on it. That’s not going to happen at Target.” 

Hickey offers a piece of advice to those determined to find something specific: “I tell people, say it out loud, put it out into the world, and it will be on the next truck.”

Doing the right thing

The store gets new merchandise regularly.. Almost daily, items arrive on trucks from Clean Out Your House while others go back out the door to be donated after a 60-day consignment period. 

Hickey wants the store to be the highlight of someone’s day in Waltham, giving shoppers an escape from more monotonous errands. “We’re not stuffy here… people come to treat themselves,” she says, “ We’re like the reward.”

Hickey said Buy & Consign is less about making profits and more about keeping resources inside the community where they’ll get the most use. They partner with Household Goods in Acton, which pairs personal shoppers with low-income families to set them up with items they need. The store also sends non-perishable foods to food pantries, linens to dog shelters, office supplies to Waltham school teachers, and physical media to More Than Words bookstore. 

Hickey tells consigners, “If you want the highest price for your items, we might not be the best place. But if you’re looking to do the right thing with your items, then we’re definitely the best option.”