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?
