You Owned It In The '90s — Now It's The Thrift Store Find Everyone Wants For Their Home

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Those who lived through it are probably the most puzzled by the 1990s resurgence. It just doesn't feel like a decade marked by a definitive style that could be easily recreated today. Interior design in the 1990s was, to some extent, pleasantly unremarkable, an eclectic mashup of earlier styles. So what's resurging? What people are missing and reminiscing about from the 1990s isn't couch styles or color schemes, but iconic '90s technology ... tech that seems to be having a cultural revival.

"... Cassettes and Walkmans are genuinely coming back," notes Nicolas Martin of Flea Market Insiders and Fleamapket (via Martha Stewart). "There are even fan communities dedicated to VHS tapes and vintage tube TVs — they treat them almost like art objects." If you walk into a thrift store with a mind to resurrect the 1990s in your living room, you'll find yourself drawn to the era's tech and media. They're memorable because they were low-key (at least until the late 1990s) but foundational to what would come after. Huge CRT TVs would later give way to flat screens, game consoles transitioned to fast-paced 64-bit gaming, film cameras were mostly replaced by phone cameras, and video cassette recorders would be made redundant by on-demand streaming. 

As those technologies were phased out, much of what once filled homes in the '90s ended up in thrift stores — cast aside as outdated or no longer useful. Now, as nostalgia intensifies among millennials and Gen Zers, those same discarded objects are being rediscovered and revalued. The kids who grew up rewinding tapes and blowing into game cartridges are now adults decorating their homes. Only this time, they're styling their spaces with the things that made their childhoods memorable.

There are a few levels at which you might choose to announce your allegiance to '90s tech. Fans of a particular corner of that world might not announce it at all, but settle into their turntables, RetroPie gaming systems, or modern-looking consoles like the Analogue 3D and Duo that emulate '90s gaming devices. But they don't look like anything special.

Someone wanting to show off their appreciation for the slow-tech 1990s might put a few collector's tokens on a prominent shelf ... say, a Nintendo Game Boy Color with a bright green case, which you can find at Goodwill for around $20, or a Polaroid camera you can buy new for $129.99 or get lucky thrifting for as little as $6. In fact, film cameras in general are making a comeback, sparking a trend in thrift store and estate sale finds.

Some tech representations are '90s in looks alone. One might settle for the Side A cassette Bluetooth speaker or, since framed prints were all the rage in the '90s, replace your outdated wall art with a thrifted Patrick Nagel or Keith Haring print — or other vintage-inspired designs, like audio cassettes, joysticks, landline phones, and VHS cameras. (What's that they're dripping with? Irony, perhaps.) VHS tapes have inspired a lot of decor, from grids of covers to spines of tapes you can find at thrift stores for pennies. Swiss painter Andy Denzler has been painting scenes resembling paused VHS cassettes since the early 2000s. Get crafty by picking up a movie you like, painting your favorite still, and framing it along with the tape.

For truly '90s decor, though, you'll need to live like the natives of the 1990s did, immersed in their rituals and traditions. You will, in short, need to make your entertainment center the focal point of your living space. An authentic display of your '90s cred requires a huge stereo component system and a VCR ($7.99 and up at Goodwill) or a DVD player ($4.99 and up).

Sales of video converters and refurbished Nintendo 64 consoles suggest that thousands of these gaming systems find their way into homes via Amazon alone every month. The VCR and the game console ($9.99 and way up) have fueled the revival of the most important piece of all ... the rising popularity of vintage CRT televisions ($8.50 and up). For a while, you can make do with one of the new retro boomboxes that are making a comeback, or get a thrifted one for $8.99 and up. Even the Commodore 64 computer, which was sold until 1994, is back.

The 1990s were, like the C64, a snapshot of transition, the last familiar moment before the world started accelerating uncontrollably. Warm '90s home decor peppered with fun and unique tech devices answered a question: How do you avoid losing yourself in sterile digital anonymity? We're asking again, and looking to cassettes, MP3 players, and console TVs for the answer. The original long-forgotten '90s trends in decor and technology ended with Y2K futurism, an ice-cold aesthetic of clear plastic and cheesy 3D graphics ... and a celebration of a coming digital age that would periodically try to escape itself with another '90s revival.