BY ELIZABETH SCRUGGS
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of clothing and shoes that seem to accumulate in your home? Most especially if you have children the piles can grow, seemingly, overnight.
With regular purging and organizing, you can keep things in check.
These days there are so many options when it comes to recycling clothing. From consignment sales to online services to groups on Facebook if you take a bit
time, you can find cash in your closet!
When it comes to closet organization, there are a few rules I always follow.
• Be merciless in your purging. If you’ve not worn it in the last 6-8 months, you’re not going to.
• Invest in good hangers. When you store your clothing correctly and keep it good shape, it will last longer.
• Be very selective in your purchases.Better to have a few good pieces, than lots of things you don’t wear taking up valuable real estate in your closet.
• Re-evaluate your wardrobe each season.
It has been said that we wear twenty percent of our clothing eighty percent of the time. Keep this in mind as you are organizing.
I worked with a client recently who felt totally overwhelmed with her closet. To compound this feeling, one of her shelves fell on Christmas day. To use her words, she was simply “afraid of the task,” and couldn’t face it. Here is what we did to get her back on track.
First completely empty the space.
Next, thoroughly clean the space by wiping the baseboards and vacuuming.
Set up three areas to sort your items and label them donate, toss, and sell
Then go through things item by item. They only need to go back into your closet if you have worn them recently.
If not, they go in
one of your sorting areas.
After two hours, we had her closet in tip-top shape. As you can see, she has lots of space left in her closet.
Most times we think we don’t have enough space, when actually if we are organized, we have more than we need.
Next – This is the part I like, this is where the cash comes in!
To get the best price possible, items need to be clean and in very good condition. Always inspect for stains or holes before listing your items for sale or putting them in a consignment sale.
I’ve built my children very respectable savings accounts just on their consigned clothing. It takes a little bit of time, but the freeing feeling you get from being organized is wonderful and the extra cash never hurts!
If you are unsure of whether to get rid of an item, here’s a tip:
When you hang it in the closet, turn the hanger backwards. When/ if you wear it, hang the hanger back the correct way. In six months, if you still have any backward hangers, get rid of those items. If you’ve not worn it in that amount of time, you’re not going to.
Local Facebook Groups:
• Wilson Co. Gently Used Clothing
• Childrens Boutique Resale Group
Local Children’s Consignment Sales:
• Friendship Christian School
• Trendy Little Ones Boutique Sale
• Teens to Tots (Mt. Juliet)
• Lollitots (Mt. Juliet)
• Over The Rainbow (Gladeville)
Most of these sales have Facebook pages where you can get all their information
Online sources:
• www.threadflip.com
• www.therealreal.com
• www.bibandtuck.com
• www.copious.com
• www.poshmark.com
• www.materialwrld.com
• www.thredup.com
These sites are very easy to use. I’ve personally used thredup.com and it was simple!