If you have finally gotten tired of wading through your closet, thinning out your clothes can be a great way to do some spring cleaning. After the initial resistance, you may find its easier than you thought to let go of as much as half of your clothing. The next question becomes what to do with it.



I've gotten rid of dozens, if not over a hundred clothing items in the last year, and while I always want to try to sell my clothes, I usually end up donating 95% of them. Ebay is great, but unless you have major brand name clothes, or clothing items that are worth more than $50 each, you will probably end up spending a lot of time doing your ebay auctions without ever seeing much money come in.

That's because it takes time to get the clothes cleaned up, photographed, and posted on ebay with good descriptions. Then you'll have to respond to questions from potential buyers, and you'll have to get realistic that only 20% of the clothes you listed will sell. Even the ones that do sell will then have to be packaged and brought to the post office, and you may have to chase after some buyers for payment, or deal with buyers that are simply difficult or never read your description. And finally, you'll have to pay Ebay's pretty hefty listing charges. At the end of the process, it can feel like a poor use of time.

Garage sales are not much better. Clothing usually goes for $5 or less, and 90% of the people who stop by your garage sale will have no interest in the clothes at all.

Consignment stores are typically the next route, but again they will only take the highest priced items, and they will take at least half the sales price. You will probably also have to make an appointment to see if the store will take the clothes, and most consignment stores will not take more than 5 items at a time. Then you have to remember to go back to the store when your sales period is up, or the consignment store will claim your clothes as their own.

I've tried all the ways, and I almost always go with straight donations now. Do make a list of the clothing items as you toss them into garbage bags, and put down a very rough estimate of what you might hope to get for them at a used clothing store or a garage sale. For some examples, tshirts are worth about a dollar, blazers are worth about $10. Shoes are worth $5 or so, and pants in good condition are worth about the same.

When you drop the clothes off at Goodwill or the Salvation Army or wherever you go, be sure to get a receipt of your donation, and write down your estimate of the value of the clothes. Then drop the receipt, and your itemized list of the clothing items into your tax folder so when you get around to preparing your taxes you have all the documentation handy.