#clothingresale

[blogofthe-millennial-woman-blog]

How to Write a Killer Product Descriptions

So, you have a pile of clothes, and it’s time to start listing them online. I don’t know about you, but my days of market stalls are over – online is the way to go. The thing about being online though is that the customer can’t feel the fabric or try a top on for size… can they? Published: Jun 07, 2017

[theyearofnoclothes]

day six - on purging

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to do a light closet cleanse, and though that is not really the purpose of the challenge, it is a part of the buying cycle so I wanted to address it. If you’ve watched any of the shows documentaries I listed last week, you’ll know that clothes never really go away, and that donating them doesn’t mean they’ll wind up anywhere other than a landfill. Reselling your clothes makes it more likely they’ll get a second life, but anyone who has ever played the resale game knows that it’s brutal - yesterday I made $18 selling three items that retailed for $383. For those not into math, that’s a 4.6% payout.

Clothing is not an investment, and for me it’s important to stop thinking I can sell clothes when I’m done with them. I *can,* but this thinking may warp my decision-making, as it’s easier to drop $800 on a pair of Gucci slides when you think you’ll be able to sell them for at least half that one day (reality check: I did buy these slides, never wore them, put them on Poshmark, and was offered $150, or $120 after fees). The other snag in the notion of resale is that it excuses not wearing clothes until they wear out, and underscores the idea that clothing is disposable.

It’s possible I’m wrong, but I don’t think that people take this attitude towards furniture, or household items, or major appliances. Though I know some people like trading in cars frequently, I feeeel like most people spend money on big-ticket items they plan on having and holding for quite a while. We do not generally spontaneously decide we want to swap out a refrigerator after a year, or an arm chair we’ve had for 18 months. Unless we completely rework a space, we hold onto these things until they break or wear out. We do not reliably do this with clothing.

I have many thoughts and frustrations about how clothing gets made and the lack of information about craftsmanship and the fact that cost is no longer a reliable measure for quality, so I understand both that it’s no longer really possible to buy a coat that lasts a lifetime and that one could absolutely be wearing all their fast fashion for two months until it wears out and this would be no better for the world than the person who flipped 25% of their slower fashion wardrobe every year. 

I don’t think there’s a single way to go about this, but I do think it’s important to consider the end at the beginning - when you’re about to buy something, asking yourself if you’ll still need it in a year, two years, five, may shift how you think about purchasing. Selling clothes is soul crushing, so getting to a place where you like what you have enough that you never want to sell it sounds pretty good to me.