This is always a big one that can be really tough for people, myself included. I used to always think that for every new piece of clothing I’d buy, I should get rid of once to keep my closet under control. But in reality, I should just stop buying new clothes when I don’t need them and value the pieces I already have.
There’s always some reason to keep stuff you know you haven’t worn in years. “Oh this is cute, I’ll totally start wearing this” or “It doesn’t look as good on me as it does on the hanger, but maybe I can jazz it up with a belt or something.” No you won’t. I won’t either. This article gives some surprisingly good tips for clearing out what you don’t need, even if you find yourself extra attached. If you read it, keep in mind it wasn’t necessarily written with an environment-conscious mindset.
Additional tips:
- If you’ve never worn it while living in that space (assuming it’s been more than a year or so), get rid of it.
- If it’s not too annoying for you, turn all your hangers around so they hook around the back of your closet rail instead of the front. Each time you wear something, turn the hanger the “right way” when you hang it back up. Set a timeframe for when you’ll go through and get rid of the clothing on the backwards hangers.
Follow the Clean Out Cascade to determine how best to get rid of your unused pieces, but if you determine they’re worth trying to sell, I’d recommend looking into ThredUP. If you haven’t heard of it, ThredUP is an online, filterable, searchable thrift consignment site (with only feminine clothing, currently). You can buy some great pieces on there for cheap or you can come in from the other side and sell your great pieces (also for cheap, FYI). Here’s an article that walks through all the steps of selling your clothes through ThredUP.
Thoughts on ThredUP:
- Perfect for those times where you think the pieces you’re getting rid of are worth *something* but you don’t want to put a ton of effort into selling them yourself.
- You’re likely not going to get a huge payout like you might on other sites where you put in more work to list your own pieces.
- I’m happy to see they at least somewhat encourage their sellers to use their own existing box to ship in their haul. The alternative is a recycled and recyclable (important!) poly-mailer that they claim to recycle themselves.
- It’s disappointing they don’t accept masculine clothing and I’d be curious to know more about why they think that market isn’t worth it.
- They say if clothes aren’t accepted, a small % are donated and the others are responsibly recycled or “reused,” but never say what “reused” means exactly. I’d like to know more, since they make it clear they typically only accept an average of 40% of what people send in.
- I was super skeptical of them at first – I was convinced they were a very green-washy company. After doing a thorough review of their website and annual report, I’m honestly pretty impressed compared to other sites I’ve seen. Although they may not be perfect yet, they seem to be really in-tune with what a sustainable company needs to do. Even if you’re not using them to sell clothes, they’re annual report summary is an engaging read.