You wouldn’t believe how many clothes end up in landfills across the world. Why are we throwing out clothing? With the exception of worn out socks and used underwear pretty much everything can be reused. Slips are okay. (Not enough people wear slips and quite frankly their clothing would look better on with them.) Bathing suits are fine. Pants, tops, dresses, skirts, hats… the list goes on and on as to what can be recycled.

Let’s get into it!

There are some chains that will recycle clothing or give you a discount for buying other clothing after recycling your old clothing.

H&M has been known to take a bag full of clothing of any brand in which they will give a “thank you coupon”.

Madewell will take any denim, and give you $20 off on a fresh pair of jeans.

Then there are other chains like Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads which will buy your clothes or give a higher rate on trade in but then in turn make a profit off of you.

If you want to trade in clothing, then you might have a great deal with a higher trade in value. The caveat is that Buffalo Exchange styles cater to teens/twenty somethings/thirty somethings where it could be all 90’s stuff.

Crossroads tends to cater to all ages in my humble opinion. But still it’s a gamble of if you will find something you like. What the buyer might deem cool, and what you may deem nice can be two very different things.

Donating old clothing is also an option to The Goodwill or Salvation Army.

A write off on taxes at the end of the year could be alright. Donating makes you feel good! It doesn’t put that new skirt in your closet though. It also doesn’t do much in tax write offs, and I end up with a standard deduction anyways. It’s a good option for clothing that you cannot trade in for some reason.

Can you just sell your own clothing on the side? The answer is yes, and online in a couple of platforms.

The answer might be Poshmark and or an Etsy store. Check out mine for example in the links above.

Poshmark takes a percentage of the price that you are selling your clothing. This could be a good option for selling used clothes that are not vintage. My experience with Poshmark in selling vintage is that they do not price things fairly in their recommendations.

When it comes to vintage it greatly depends on the quality of the garment. It also depends on if it is name brand or not? To name a few! There are many variables when it comes to vintage that one cannot simply say I spent $40 on this shirt once upon a time and nowadays it would only be worth $8 or $400. Poshmark will be the one to say $8 no matter what though. I wasn’t impressed in the vintage department of Poshmark.

If you are selling a pair of shoes that is namebrand and current in today’s market then Poshmark is your platform. I think that it is worth it for them to help be the middleman in getting your stuff out there if it is current fashion and/or name brand stuff.

If you were going to sell vintage though, I would suggest going through a storefront such as Etsy.

Let’s talk about Etsy…

Etsy arts and crafts can be a challenging road to manage. There are a lot of competitors in Etsy. A lot of competitors with mass produced arts and crafts come in at a lower price point. This makes it difficult for a single person unit to compete with. But if you are selling vintage, this is more of a fair playing ground. Less of a challenge. Almost anyone can solve vintage, but when it comes to fairly pricing vintage that is up to the seller. I would recommend that if you do have vintage clothing to see what others are selling there for that seems reasonable to you. Etsy gives a great platform for this.

Lastly EBay is an option for selling just about anything.

Keep in mind everyone wants something for nothing or at least a good deal. Unless you have something highly desired by most consumers… which is a different story.

A good example is Onitsuka Tiger shoes. I LOVE these shoes, and got a pair of the Mexico 66 SD’s while visiting London. The company shut down its US operations down this past November of 2023.

This universally flattering, slim profile shoe, which takes very little to almost no time to break in, is most coveted shoe ever among many. Today in the USA no one can get them. One thing we learned with the toilet paper fiasco of the beginning of the COVID pandemic is when people can’t get something, they go crazy. But guess what? Not all hope is lost, and you don’t need to hoard. You CAN buy them from some great Japanese sellers on eBay. The prices may be slightly elevated. But hey that’s consumerism and economics, right?

For vintage on eBay, people are looking for a deal though which is a good thing to keep in mind when buying and/or selling.

In end

There are a lot of options for recycling clothing! I prefer Poshmark and Etsy myself. What would you pick?

Bonus! Here is a YouTube video with additional tips/tricks!

-Keri

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