Don’t Shop, Swap!

With Christmas upon us and Black Friday pushing us to buy, buy, buy clothing at discounted prices, I think that we all to stop and ask ourselves if we really need more clothes. Clothing waste is an increasingly large problem.  With the advent of fast fashion houses like H&M and Zara encouraging weekly shopping, women are buying clothes at an alarming rate and then discarding them at an equally fast pace.  Most people that I discuss this topic with tell me with a sense of justification for their shopping, “Well, I donate my clothes to the less fortunate”. But do you really know where your donated clothes end up? A Marketplace investigation shows that only a fraction of the clothes (https://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2017-2018/clothing-waste-fashions-dirty-secret) that are donated are sold or used locally.  The majority of donated clothing ends up going overseas to places like Africa where they are then actually resold to the local people. So much for the good associated with a donation! Since there are too many clothes and the quality of these items is poor, the clothes sent away are frequently ending up in landfill or worse, are being burned and polluting our air. It can all be rather discouraging. What to do with the clothes that we no longer want?  Our first objective should be to find a way to reuse the clothes. If they are not synthetic, you can perhaps use them as cleaning rags, as I have done here:

If you have a sewing machine, you can turn your old clothing into reusable tissues or even a shopping bag.

Another fun option to do with clothes you no longer love: give it to a friend or better yet, organize a clothing swap. It’s a great way to extend the life of clothing, prevent it from going to landfill and also help us freshen up our wardrobes without shopping. As I am trying to simplify my wardrobe, I have recently done a closet purge. With a good pile of clothes from myself and my daughters, I decided to organize a clothing swap/brunch with women from my gym.   My goal was to make sure that my clothes found a good home and were reused.

We were a group of about 10 women varying in age from 18 to 50+. Everyone arrived feeling a little shy but fortified by brunch and a few mimosas, soon everyone was trying on clothes. 

I had told everyone to bring 5 items but people bought bags of clothes. We had so many things, I didn’t know how to showcase them. A drying rack came in handy for that:

As part of the clothing swap, I also told people to bring accessories. To my surprise, the majority of these items were left almost entirely untouched.

This is a reminder to me that I should not buy any new accessories when there are so many used ones that can be found. I estimate that we started with about five garbage bags of clothes. After the event, we were left with about one and a half garbage bags full of clothes. These were donated to a local charity (NOVA) that resells the clothes in our neighborhood. Hopefully they won’t end up in Africa….

Even though we were all different shapes and sizes, everyone ended up with something, including me who didn’t want anything. I got a beautiful, cozy, cable knit mock neck sweater made of cotton and wool:

It was something that I had actually always wanted but strangely, I could never seem to find the right one i.e. not too voluminous or long. I am pleased to report that I have been wearing the sweater regularly since the swap. Gwen, the woman who gave it to me, told me that she had only worn it a few times and never really liked it. She ended taking one of my skirts which too small for me. What a great swap! And all for free.

While we all agreed that this was a fun event that we need to do again, the first thing that we can all do to address this situation is to buy less.  And, before we decide to buy clothing, maybe we should see if we can find an item used or if we can borrow it (or swap) from a friend. Being more mindful and careful when buying clothes is not only good for our wallet, it’s good for the environment.

Challenge for the Week:  What are you doing with your used clothes?  Have you every organized a clothing swap? Or would you?  Are you shopping less to reduce your impact on the environment? Love to hear your ideas or experiences.