Closet Clean Chapter 4

If you are following this series, you now find yourself at Chapter 4: Gift, Sell, Donate, Repair. You have prepared yourself with supplies and space for this process, you have selected your ideal functional wardrobe for the foreseeable future, and you have sent the items in your wardrobe in need of repair before they are stored or worn to their appropriate fixers. Now is when we talk about what to do with all of the things that you have outworn the use of.

Whether you have outgrown the use of something is a decision entirely up to you, but I will still say a few things about this. I know it is an enormous hassle to store and care for clothing, but we have developed an honestly shameful mindset in the last twenty years that clothing is temporary, disposable, and should carry some sort of resale value. There is already enough clothing in the world to dress the entire planet for the next 100 years. Pore over the hundreds of thousands of pages on The RealReal or Vestaire Co. and you will see the proof. It is embarrassing how much clothing we have, which we consider disposable, that we do not care for, that we offload onto the global south. I have directed readers of this newsletter a thousand times to The Or Foundation’s Dead White Man’s Clothes, a matter of fashion literacy at this point.

We need to shift the mindset of buying clothing from “purchase” to “acquisition”. A purchase is something you have no responsibility for. An acquisition is something that is with you for the long term.

However, there are times that you will want to get rid of something, whether that be because your body has changed shape or it is truly just not useful to you anymore. And the below are suggestions, in procedural order, for this moment!

Step 1: Gift

Is there someone in your life that would appreciate this item gifted to them? This could be your sister-in-law, an old friend, a colleague (when appropriate), or–what is increasingly true for me–your own child in a few years. The first round of asks should always be to hand off with love and no expectation to someone who will be able to continue enjoying the item. It puts good karma into the world, it makes your friend (or future child) very happy, and it does you the favor of de-burdening you of the thing you no longer need.

Step 2: Sell

Once you have thoroughly interrogated every possible avenue for gifting, now it is time to consider selling. Prior to the days of designer online resale, we used to have good ole fashioned stoop sales, which I am still a huge fan of! But, in the case you don’t have the capacity to arrange this, think of:

• eBay - still an amazing place to list your old clothes if they are in good condition, especially if you have a great grasp of key words to help you appear in user searches. One of my dream jobs is overhauling eBay’s fashion and home design department, just putting that out into the universe for light manifestation.

• Club Vintage - one of my faaaavorite vintage slash secondhand shops, in this case you need to apply to be a vendor, but if you’re consistently finding yourself with great things to move along, they are the best option.

• Noihsaf Bazaar - for independent designers, makers and small shops, which means any indie labels or special items will be recognized and appreciated a bit more thoroughly.

• By Rotation - will take your items and rent them to a global community, earning you a bit of cash.

TRR and Vestaire Co. feel like a forgone conclusion for many people at this point, but my critiques of those institutions are these:

TRR does a terrible job assessing, labeling, catching flaws and typos, making their customer experience fraught and often frustrating, and each seller experience a truly unfulfilling experience, monetarily. I can argue (and have argued) that they could decrease their carbon footprint just with a backend operations lift with better product identification to make items more searchable and thus move them back into circulation faster. (Fixing this marketplace is another nerdy dream job of mine that I could do with even just FOUR EXTRA HOURS every day, manifesting this here.) Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid TRR shopper, I’m just critical of where they could do way better.

Vestaire Co. is a digital yard sale, and they don’t do amazing at selling higher price point items for their vendors, so if you’re looking for a higher return, start with eBay or the smaller guys first.

Step 3: Donate

I repeat: we have enough clothing in the world to clothe everyone for the next 100 years. There is this extremely American cultural fallacy that has started to spread to the rest of the world: the idea that we live so well that anyone who doesn’t live as well as us should be grateful to receive whatever castoffs we send their way, in whatever condition they are in. It is wholly false. The fact that so many people are willing to buy fast fashion clothing made by an underpaid overworked human somewhere, wear it a few times, then send it elsewhere for another underpaid overworked human to deal with as waste is absolutely insane. This is why I BEG that people find purposeful ways to gift and give before the ever, ever donate. Goodwill organizations receive too many donations from people who have convinced themselves they are doing a good deed when in reality they are just making space in their homes to buy new sh*t. Please make an effort to re-home things conscionably and with purpose before sending them off into the void and assuming someone else needs your crap.

NYC publishes a donation guide here, a good place to consult for a few low hanging fruit organizations that you will have an easy time findings.

You can order a ThredUp clean out kit here, and anything they cannot take for resale they will send to a fabric recycler or upcycler. You will pay for shipping, as you well should.

You can also look into local donation programs and drives, which are typically looking for extremely specific items at a specific time of year. So if you’re getting ready to part with your down jacket in April, you should wait til the fall to donate, because it will make more of a difference then.

Whatever you do, don’t throw away your clothes. Turn them into rags, reduce them to fabric scraps for quilting or stuffing, upcycle them into table cloths or pillows, literally anything will do aside from the landfill, where no clothing belongs.

This was Chapter 4: Gift, Sell, Donate, and a reminder this series goes:

1. Prepare

2. Edit This Season’s Wardrobe 

3. Assess and Repair

4. Gift, Sell, Donate (you are here 📍)

5. Storage

6. Living With Your Things

Next up, storage!

x Anja