Spring Clean Your Wardrobe

Do you love clothes and want to keep changing your wardrobe but can’t fit any more in? Well you’re not alone. According to a report by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), called Valuing our Clothes, the average household has around £4,000 worth of clothes in their wardrobes and only 30 per cent of that is actually worn – resulting in around 350,000 tonnes of garments worth an estimated £140m ending up in landfill every year in the UK. So what can we do with clothes instead of hoarding them or throwing them away?

Swapping

You could arrange a little clothes swap soiree with your own friends or you could look at swishing.co.uk – the UK’s only all in one clothing exchange and fashion retail store. You send your old clothes in and get credits for them towards anything else you fancy on the site. Genius if you ask me!

And this in fact links in nicely to an event Greener Kirkcaldy are having in their High Street Hub in July – ‘Love Your Clothes Week’ from Wednesday 27th to Saturday 30th. You will be able to find out more about clothes, swap take away clothes and try quick and easy upcycling activities. In the meantime there’s more info on swapping and selling on the Love Your Clothes website.

Selling

You could also sell them directly. There’s Ebay and Gumtree or alternatively there are now more upmarket US sites like Poshmark and Vinted which provide prepaid shipping labels and the buyer pays the cost. You just have to snap a photo with your smartphone, download and print the label, wrap it, send it and wait for your cash to come in.

The UK site Preloved allows you to post an add for free but you have to do everything yourself and then there’s Facebay (there is a Fife one) which is part of Facebook. It’s basically a FB page you can upload photos of your old clothes to either singly or in bundles and then sell directly to people in your area. You can even ask the buyer to pick the clothes up. So minimal effort there.

Or you could: Send them off to be sold. There are now a range of places to sell on any designer wear you might have been saving for a special occasion but have now decided that you would rather have the cash. Sites such as The Clothes Agency will list your designer clothes for £3.75 per garment and not charge commission like some other sites. You can also buy second hand celebrity clothing on this website and raise funds for charity.

Or why not Sell in Person

Closer to home and a bit more down to earth is Perth based. VTP Clothing in Inveralmond Industrial Estate, Perth They buy and sell quality high street clothing from shops such as  White Stuff, Boden, Monsoon, Next, Joules, HOBBS, Jigsaw, Debenhams, M&S, River Island, ZARA, Phase Eight etc. and offer you an upfront payment of 30 per cent for anything sold for under £15 and 40 per cent for anything over.

If you prefer a more cosmopolitan shopping experience then take your bag of unwanted vintage threads to Glasgow’s Rowdy Roddy Vintage where they will either buy your clothes in a straight cash deal or swap them for trade credit.

Sell Your Wedding or Bridesmaid dress

The company Bride2Bride  will list your dress for free and don’t even seem to want any money for the sale while Sell My Wedding Dress offer a £15 slot to post an ad for 12 months.

Give clothes away

For clothes that can’t be sold, or if  you don’t want the hassle of selling, you could donate them to your local charity shop, or advertise them on sites like Freegle or Freecycle – you can advertise for people to pick up from you directly, reducing the hassle for yourself even more!

So whether you have cleared out your wardrobe or swapped it for a whole load of someone else’s designer, vintage or just unwanted clothes then you can sit back safe in the knowledge that you have been part of a growing movement of people extending the life of their clothing and helping avoiding all those tonnes of clothes filling up our landfill sites and producing carbon emissions which we could really do without.