Thred-up by Adrienne Schroeder

January 03, 2013

Posted By: Shaunescy

The laundry never seemed to overwhelm me after my first child was

born. Everything was so adorable. I loved folding her little clothes and

marveling at how tiny her socks were. And as she outgrew something

I just packed it away into a Rubbermaid box in the garage because I

thought we might have another baby one day and I may get to use all

of those cute clothes again. Six years later, I did get to use it all again.

(Well, not all of it because my second daughter was a lot bigger than

my first, almost 2lbs. bigger at birth, and they were born in different

seasons, so that messed up a lot of the sizes with the seasonal clothes…)

I remember it becoming harder to keep up with the laundry. I began to

shove baskets of clothes, clean or dirty, into closets when people were

coming over because I hadn’t dealt with it yet.

I wanted to save some of my favorites from each child because, I swear,

one day I’m going to do what Martha Stewart suggested and make a

patchwork baby blanket out of their old clothes for their own baby. I

am. Really.

After my third was born, a boy, who needed a completely different

wardrobe than the girls, the amount of laundry and piles of clothes got

out of control.

People are so generous when you have a baby, both with new clothes

and hand-me-downs. But after awhile I’m often conflicted about what

to do with all of these clothes. I’ve given many bags to Sacks and

Salvation Army. I’ve given some things to friends but most of my friends

have kids the same ages as my own so they can’t really use our hand-

me-downs. And some of the clothes we have seem too nice or too new

to just give away to a thrift store. Bibs and Binkies will buy baby and

children’s clothes and Second Wind will take kids’ outdoor gear and

some clothing on consignment, which is great, but what often happens

to me is I finally take the huge pile of clothes I’ve been setting aside to

take to these places and they end up taking some of it but not all of it,

and then I have to go to another place to drop off the rejects. And with

three kids in tow, that’s more trouble than it’s worth sometimes.

A friend recently told me about a company called Thred-Up. It was

actually started in 2009 and is basically an online consignment shop

where they handle everything for you. You go to their website,

www.thredup.com, and request a bag. (I was sent the bag for free

during a promotion. Sometimes they request a $4.95 deposit for the

bag. It is fully refunded when you send the bag back.) They send it to

you along with a prepaid label, so you pay nothing to ship the bag full

of clothes to them. You stuff it full of your nicest children’s clothes,

then either drop it at a local UPS store (we have one in the Hastings

shopping center) or you can leave it by the mailbox for the mail carrier

to take it. Thred-up will then sell your clothes on their site. You can

see what certain clothes usually sell for so you’ll have an idea of how

much money your items will go for. Once your clothes sell the money

can be directly deposited into your PayPal account or you can use it as

credit at Thred-up to order new clothes. If they do not accept all of the

clothes you send them, they will donate them to charity.

It’s an easy way to get rid of some of your nicer children’s clothes once

the kids outgrow them and make a little money back too!

What do you do with your kid's outgrown clothes?

More from Montana Parent

Thank You to Our Sponsors