Clothing Swap

Today was the day!  I hosted the first clothing swap and it was spectacular.  I feel bad that a lot of people decided not to participate.  There was a TON of clothes there.  You will see from the pictures how grand it was.  I was going through every room in my house (including the garage) and getting rid of.  I have two kids ages 6 and almost 3.  Who knows when/if we will have another kid and by the time we did the clothes that my kids wore would be out of style or I just wouldn't want to use them anymore.  So, out with the old and in with.....well.....empty plastic boxes.  Woo hoo!  I sent out an invitation to all the ladies that lived near me to my clothing swap.  Here are the rules so you know what I did.

1. To participate you must give. Meaning, if you want to come and get things then please bring stuff to share. This is all free. Also, make sure what you are donating are things that you for sure want to get rid of.

2. You must bring items that are in clean and working order. No one wants broken, ripped, damaged, stained or worn-to-threads items. Plus, I don't want to be left with it all at the end.

3. You must bring items that can be donated to Deseret Industries or Goodwill when this is all over.

4. When you bring things over to my house please have them already in their sections. Meaning clothes (preferably by section: baby, toddler, girl, boy, woman, maternity), jewelry, books and toys. I don't want to spend time separating.

5. For toys - If you have small toys like Barbie items please put them all together in a Ziploc bag. Also make sure there are matches to it all. I don't want one shoe without the other;-) If you have anything that needs a battery please make sure it is working when you bring it so that people can see that and test it out.
Here is a list of things that you can bring. Make sure everything works.

It was fun going through all the clothes and I ended up keeping about 15ish outfits between the two kids for their hope chest.  It's always fun to see what you wore when you were little.  Plus I couldn't get rid of my favorites.  Just so you know:  Pretty much all you see in this room is what came from me.  A few things here and there came from the other people.  I can't believe how many shoes my kids have.  Well, the clothes too.  


I had about half of the room in infant-24 month girl clothes and shoes.  The clothes on the right of this first picture was 2T-5T girls clothes.  In the two tables in the middle were infant-2T boy clothes. 

I ended up putting signs on the walls or windows that said the sizes.  That helped a lot. 

This whole section was 12-24 month clothes.

This room was for the adults.  You can see the purses in the bottom left hand corner. 

I had a lot I got rid of in this room as well.  I piled up maternity clothes and others that I just wasn't wearing.  I also had about 10 pairs of shoes I cleaned out.  On the couches were women's shirts, skirts, and dresses.

Obviously this is where the pants ended up. 

OK, so I went through my kids rooms and found tons that I wanted to see gone.  My daughter was so willing to part with her toys I could have cleaned out more but she plays with everything else so I stopped.  At least we could organize her room.  That was nice.

I had a ton of infant toys that were just sitting around so I added them to the bunch.
All in all it was a great day.  Crazy.  I wish more people would have participated because we took loads to DI (like Goodwill).  It's funny.  Most of the infant-24 month clothes didn't get touched.  Most of the people that participated had older kids.  Oh well.  Their loss.  It feels so good to have a more organized, less cluttered home.  I still have to go through my craft room but that will be a different night and I will be selling instead of giving away.  Although it may feel like I'm giving them away since they will be marked way down.  I just want to get rid of more stuff.  Organize even more. 
This will be happening again but not to this scale (since I don't have that much stuff anymore) and it will just be one thing.  Like jewelry, or books, or men's clothes, or home decorations, etc.....  I think more and more people will start to do this.  It's fun and you get new stuff (to you.)  Plus you get to have a girl's night.