KonMari

Have you got some old clothes you’re looking to sell online? If you’ve been doing some spring cleaning, anytime cleaning, or perhaps you’ve become completely obsessed with the KonMari Method (like me), then this post is for you.

Once you’ve gone through the process of paring down your closet, you’re left with a pile of clothes that you don’t want any more. Of course, you can always find a local charity and donate them, but if you’d like to try to make a little extra cash, I’ve put together a guide to selling on 5 different sites I’ve used in the past. I’ve been selling clothing online for years, and have had a lot of success using them.

I’ve rated them all by ease of listing, shipping, the price you can get, and whether or not you should expect to negotiate with buyers. Keep in mind, though — any time you’re selling a used item, the market dictates what you’re going to be able to get for it. Although you may really love the sweater you wore to your sister’s graduation, if it’s selling online for $2, you’re going to be hard-pressed to get $20 for it.

Also, be sure to be as descriptive as possible when creating your listings. If there are any flaws, defects or damage to the article of clothing, include a photograph so that the buyer knows what they’re getting. It’s also helpful to have a close up of any small patterns/prints, and to state whether or not your item comes from a smoke-free home (this can definitely affect clothing).

Check out the sites below — you can use one, or multiple depending on the value of the items you have to sell!

• ThredUp
  • Ease of use: 😄😄😄
  • Ease of shipping: ✉️✉️✉️
  • Price you can get: 💰
  • Negotiation: No

ThredUp is the easiest site to use as far as the work needed on your end. However, it’s also the site where you’ll get the least money for the clothes. If you’re not feeling like spending time researching recent sales or photographing your clothes, this is the site for you.

You simply request a bag (in the top right-hand corner under the search bar, click the “SELL” link, then click “ORDER A KIT” on the next page). You’ll need to give them some basic information about the items you’re selling and give them your address. Then, ThredUp will send you a bag that you’ll load up with the clothes you’re ready to say goodbye to. They also give you an option — if the clothes aren’t able to be re-sold, they will either recycle the items or send them back to you (but you’ll have to pay for the shipping to have them returned). The bags are huge and come with a pre-paid shipping label on the outside. Once you’ve filled the bag, drop it off at your closest post office. In about 5-6 weeks (after they’ve finished processing), you’ll hear from ThredUp via email, and they’ll let you know how much money they’ll be giving you for your clothes. Keep in mind that because ThredUp is doing all the hard work to re-sell the items, it won’t be retail prices for the items. You can either have the money paid out to you, or use it as credits on the site (because what else are you going to do with all the empty space you have in your closet now?).

• Vinted
  • Ease of use: 😄😄
  • Ease of shipping: ✉️✉️
  • Price you can get: 💰
  • Negotiation: Yes

Vinted is a site filled with folks selling their old clothes. It’s relatively easy to use, but you’ll still need to photograph your clothes and decide on a price, making it a bit more work than ThredUp.

Here’s a photo of the homepage:

You can see that some folks have mannequins they use to style the clothes, but if you don’t happen to have one of those laying around, you can snap a selfie in the item, hang it on a hanger, or lay it down flat.

With Vinted, you can set up your listings online; or, if you have a smartphone, Vinted has an app that makes the process relatively simple. Just snap a few photos, write up a description of the item (brand, size, etc.) and Vinted will prompt you for some additional info to help others search for your clothes. As we discussed previously, you’ll want to search the brand or similar items on their site to see what they’re selling for, and price yours accordingly. If it’s in excellent condition, you can ask a bit more; if you’re less concerned about price, you can undercut the other sellers to make your item irresistible.

When a person is interested in the item, they will either buy it outright, or they may make an offer. You can counteroffer, accept their offer, or also offer a trade for an item they’re selling. In my experience, folks on Vinted are more likely to be hunting for a good deal, and the crowd is younger. If you have some items that are worth more, this may not be the place to sell them. Once you come to an agreement, Vinted will email you a pre-paid shipping label. You’ll need to find your own packaging, print the label, affix it to the box/envelope, and drop it off at your local post office. Vinted will then offer a payout directly to your bank account.

• Poshmark (sign up with code JGARX to get us both $10!)
  • Ease of use: 😄😄
  • Ease of shipping: ✉️✉️
  • Price you can get: 💰💰
  • Negotiation: Yes

Poshmark is extremely similar to Vinted — the biggest difference is that Poshmark is designed more for brand-name items that should expect to fetch a good price.

You can see that the homepage here has items from more well-known brands (and the photos are a little higher quality):

Poshmark does not allow you to create listings online, but they’re easy to do with your smartphone. You’re a bit more limited than Vinted (images must be square, only 4, etc.) but you do have fun filters available to fix the photos up a bit if you like. Again, you’ll want to search the site a bit for similar items and price yours accordingly.

Like Vinted, when a buyer is interested, they’ll either make an offer or buy the item outright (trades can be facilitated here, but are much less common). Once you’ve come to an agreement and made a deal, Poshmark will send you a pre-paid shipping label. Again, you’ll need to find your own packaging, affix the label and drop it off at the post office. Though it’s slightly more difficult to locate than on Vinted, you can still have a payout made directly to your bank account. However, you can also use the money you’ve made here as credits for the site.

• eBay
  • Ease of use: 😄😄
  • Ease of shipping: ✉️
  • Price you can ask for: 💰💰
  • Negotiation: Unlikely, but possible

eBay is one of the most well-known sites for selling online, but not many people think of it for selling used clothes. However, it’s pretty easy, and you can get good money for the items because people on eBay are usually looking for something specific when they visit the site.

Some of the items that show up when you search “anthropologie”:

Like Vinted, you can create listings from either your phone or your computer, and can easily snap photos with your smartphone during the process. In addition, eBay has some features that make selling pretty easy. If you can find something just like your item, there’s an option to “Sell Similar Item”. This autofills a lot of the required information, and you only have to add your own photos and description.

The big difference with eBay is the selling options — you can either set up an auction or put a set price. Either way, you can give the buyer the option to make an offer (if you do want to negotiate). Sometimes, even with an auction or set price, you will get a message from a buyer looking to negotiate, and you can decide if you want to do that as well. With an auction, you can underprice the item a bit in the hopes of getting a bidding war going. This is great for sought-after name-brand items.

Once you’ve completed the sale, eBay will notify you that the buyer has paid and put the money directly in to your PayPal account. The easiest way to ship the item is using eBay’s process to create a pre-paid shipping label for USPS. This does mean that you will need to have a general idea of how much the item weighs so that you can accurately purchase postage, as well as the type of shipping you’d like to use (priority mail vs. first class, etc.). You’ll also need to provide your own box. Then, just affix the label and drop the item off at the post office.

• Etsy
  • Ease of use: 😄
  • Ease of shipping: ✉️
  • Price you can get: 💰💰💰
  • Negotiation: No

Etsy is definitely the most time-consuming site to setup and use, but can get you the best price. Keep in mind that Etsy is only for vintage or handmade clothing. You’ll need to research any vintage items to get as much history as possible. With handmade items, if they’re one-of-a-kind, you can decide the price!

In order to sell on Etsy, you’ll need to set up a shop. Here’s a link to mine so that you can get an idea of what that looks like. I’ll follow up later with more information on setting up an Etsy shop, but for now, the main things that you need to know are that you’ll be setting up a URL, creating a description, and filling out your shop policies.

You’re going to want to use the most professional photographs that you can get — if you have a professional camera, I would recommend using it. Find a fun background to use as well — either white, or a brick wall, something fun, but not too distracting.

As I mentioned before, list the item with as much detail as you can. Do a thorough inspection of the clothing. Search the site for pricing ideas, and include relevant tags in your listing. Do your research.

Once the item is purchased, it’s easiest to go through Etsy’s shipping process. This is identical to eBay’s — you’ll need weight and your shipping process, and then can print out a label that you’ll affix to your own packaging. Then drop it off at the post-office, and you’re set! Etsy will pay out to a bank account once a week, on Mondays.

That’s the basics of selling clothes online! Do you use other sites? Have questions, or any other tips? Let me know in the comments!

This was an insane weekend of EXTREME everything.

Firstly, Friday night, our IKEA Malm bed frame broke. I’d love to have some steamy story to tell, but Damon was literally just climbing in to bed and BOOM! EXTREME BREAKAGE! The front corner (left if you’re facing the bed) went down. Scared the bejeezus out of Honey, and left our bed at a weird dropped angle. We tried rearranging the planks we’d stuck in it but it was too late. We slept at like a 45 degree angle, with me on the high side. Which was a complete nightmare. I woke up a billion times just to crawl back up to my pillow.

So Saturday, we had to get a new bed. We’d given up on IKEA at this point (this is the second Malm we’ve been through), and decided to go for something a little nicer. We decided to go with West Elm, and braved the pelting snow (EXTREME!) to go to the store.

We ended up with this cool bed frame:

Modern Bed, Linen Weave.

Let me also add that we went down to West Elm figuring they might not have everything we wanted in stock, so we had 3 or 4 beds we were willing to go with. This was not one of them, but was the only bed they had available. We (read: me) weren’t about to sleep on our tilted mattress another night, so we went with it. It’s actually super nice.

We got the thing crammed in to the back of the car, but it didn’t fit. So we had to cruise down North Ave with the back of our car hanging open, from Kingsbury to the Home Depot (not far, just over a lil bridge). Please note that it had stopped snowing while we were in the store, but had picked back up with a renewed fervor when we left, and the wind was whipping around all over the place. Damon got some twine and tied down the back of the car, we went to the house and dropped the bed off.

A couple of weeks ago at Target we’d seen some pretty sweet end tables we were considering using for night stands, and now — what better excuse to pick these guys up?

So in the EXTREME blinding sunlight, the day began to warm up and we swung by the Target on Elston. They’d had 3 of the tables when we were there before, and now they had two, and they didn’t match each other very well (the wood is kinda stripey). We bought the one we liked and agreed to go to another Target. We carried this and our groceries out in the light snow, then headed to finish picking up groceries at Fresh Thyme.

At this point it was snowing again, hard. We went to the other Target, grabbed the other table, and then finally went home. TO START PUTTING THE BED TOGETHER.

Assembly was surprisingly easy, and was quite nice as the sun had started shining again and was streaming through the bedroom window. The thing that took us the longest was cleaning the entire room after we’d taken practically all the furniture out. We scrubbed the floors, the baseboards — there was dust on the wall. I don’t even know how that got there. Insanity.

Now. I’d been making plans all week to KonMari the bathroom. I’ll be following up soon with some additional information on the kitchen and my papers, but this has to be recorded as well, and is convenient as part of my weekend discussion. So, once the bedroom was pretty well set, I dragged everything out of the bathroom and onto the kitchen floor. I present you:

Anyone who has visited our place knows how small our bathroom is, so the fact that this much stuff came out of there…Damon just kept saying “More?!” as I was piling it up.

Damon and I aren’t particularly smelly people, but we had 11 sticks of deodorant. And I definitely have a lot of hair, but not sure if it was enough to warrant a pile of hair ties this size:

Effing yikes. To my credit, a lot of these were up high in a top shelf and I didn’t have daily access to them. So, there’s that. I was able to pare things down pretty quickly, and while I did that, Damon gave the bathroom a deep cleaning. After about an hour, this is all that remained:

As you can imagine, it was much easier putting everything away.

By the time we finished everything, it was 9 PM, and we were starving. We had an EXTREMEly late dinner and then both completely passed out.

Sunday was relatively uneventful — I had to spend a few hours at work, and Damon and I were so exhausted we couldn’t even think about cleaning anything else. But we were loving our new furniture so much, we bought ourselves this new bookshelf to match our bed.

(I’ll also note that we have an old piece of furniture that came out of a dog-themed store (treats ‘n’ food ‘n’ such) we’re using for our TV stand in the bedroom right now, but that’s a story for another time. It legit has a paw print as the grip for the drawer.) It’s going to have to function more like an entertainment center but should hike the TV up enough that we can watch it comfortably from our bed. Exciting.

From EXTREME weather to EXTREME cleaning to EXTREME furniture building and shopping, this weekend was just crazy. Looking forward to lazing about this Saturday, as long as nothing in our house breaks and requires replacement*!

 
*Knocking on wood so hard right now.

Part 1 of my series on the KonMari Method can be found here.

I’ve spent the majority of this long weekend (Whoop! 3-day weekend for President’s Day!) continuing the process of KonMari’ing my stuff. Yes, I’ve made it in to a verb. And it is one for me. This has been an entire lifestyle change, to be honest. But it’s everything I’ve been looking for. Each time I shed something new, I feel lighter, clearer, and ready to tackle the next category of items.

In this second post, I wanted to share the remainder of the process as I finished going through my clothing. My hope is that this will give you a general idea of the sheer volume of items that have left my house in the past month. Last time, I shared the process of going through my tops, and they were only the beginning. Marie Kondo separates each category of clothing into Tops, Bottoms, Dresses, Outerwear, Socks, and Underwear. Then, I still needed to do my Accessories and Shoes.

Here’s the rest of my clothing, by the numbers:

Before: Started with 70 skirts/pants/shorts/yoga pants (“bottoms”)

After: Kept 38 total items

Before: Started with 57 dresses

After: Kept 14

Before: Started with 61 pieces of outerwear

After: Kept 34 (This is Chicago after all. One does need a certain amount of outerwear. Not 61 pieces, though.)

Before: 79 total pairs of socks

After: Kept 34 pairs (I got rid of all the boring white ones!)

Before: 11 Bras, 89 pairs of underwear
After: 3 Bras, 42 pairs of underwear
(No pictures, of course. I couldn’t believe I had 89 pairs of underwear. Who even needs that much?! I still think 42 pairs is probably a little high but most of them were pretty new and I couldn’t reconcile pitching them. I’ll just get rid of them when they get old.)

Before: (accessories) 19 pairs of tights, 40 bags, 18 belts, 27 scarves, 20 hats, 16 pairs of gloves

After: 6 pairs of tights, 18 bags, 11 belts, 18 scarves, 9 hats, 2 pairs of gloves

These went from being stored in a huge box from Ikea and a nearly full to bursting Rubbermaid tote to one and a half small drawers and a ¾ full Rubbermaid tote (bags stored there). Marie Kondo recommends storing your bags stacked inside of one another, and folding those that can be folded (canvas, reusable, etc.). I’m still clearing closet space for room to store them in this way.

And now for the grand finale. BEHOLD:
Before: 72 pairs of shoes

After: 33 pairs of shoes (And look how organized they are! I’ve added a couple of pairs to replace some of the more worn ones, but still have plenty of room.)

All in all, nearly 14 full trash bags of items left our house and headed to the Salvation Army. (A couple of those included some of Damon’s stuff, as well!) I had about 2 small grocery bags of items to sell online, and that’s been going pretty well. And remember: this is just the clothing portion of KonMari. This is Step 1.

My whole thought process about my clothing has changed. I mean, look at the spaces between the coat hangers! I’m much more cognizant of my available space when I make purchases, because I actually do know how much I have. Everything is now so organized that when I do laundry, each item has a “place” to go back to. No longer am I piling things in drawers on top of each other, stuffing them to the brim. No longer am I on the hunt for some article of clothing that I know I have, not knowing where it is. For the first time, I know where everything is. And I know that if I look for something and it’s not in its place, it’s in the laundry. I’ve never had a situation like this before, but I love it. The shift has begun, and I’m never going back.

Ready to start your own KonMari journey? Pick up The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. It’s worth it.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I intended to discuss all of the things I have been getting rid of more in-depth, and today is the beginning of those posts.

 * * * * *

“I’ve never known a girl with a messy room before. This is awesome.”

“Are you like, a hoarder?”

“Oh, just give it to Kelley, she’ll take it home.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a lot of things. Not necessarily any things in particular, just stuff. A lot of it. As a kid, I collected anything I had two of. Bookmarks, bouncy balls, plastic dog toys, porcelain dalmatians, puppets, ribbons, Beanie Babies, you name it. I had one, so I might as well have them all. My small room felt even smaller, as every nook, cranny and wall space was covered in items. I was never able to keep the area clean, as there was just too much to fit in the space. There was nowhere for it to go but on the floor, under the dresser, under the bed, and on and under my desk and my bookshelf and shelves and everywhere else.

The situation was frustrating, of course. And my cleaning techniques were slow and methodical, often leading to what my parents liked to call “sorting pencils”. I got bogged down in the details. I made little progress. This commonly resulted in the trash-bag style cleanout, where my folks would come in and load up what they could in to bags and remove it from the room. This was pretty devastating for me, as I felt very connected to everything. However, they usually became annoyed halfway through and just left the bags in my room, so I just pulled my items out of the bags and put them back in to place. (Sometimes this “place” was still on the floor — but for the most part I tended to know where everything was.)

I’d like to note, I come from a family of “pack-rats”, going back probably generations. (I’m sure some aspect of this carried over from The Great Depression, but that’s besides the point.) I’m not the odd man out in this situation. This behavior comes out of habit; not spite. It certainly wasn’t as though I were the only one in the house with a lot of stuff; but in this I can speak only for myself and my own experiences.

In high school, I found a book about clearing out clutter, and was able to remove 8 trash bags of stuff from my room. It was a huge relief. And this set me on a path that I’ve been going down for about the last 15 years, trying to get rid of excess and somehow find myself in a relaxing space, while managing my own shopping and spending habits somewhere in between.

I’ve read book after book after book. I watched tons of “Hoarders” on TV. And though I’ve never been that bad; never had that much stuff — I could absolutely relate to the person who knew where every single item came from, how they were feeling that day, and how much they’d paid for it. And to the feeling of having someone else come in and pull your things away from you. It’s devastating. Since striking out on my own, I’ve never had so many things that my space was unlivable. But I can and will admit that my household has been in disarray often, and there are many items that I have had (and still have at this moment) that did not have homes.

And after picking up this book, I’ve finally found the technique. I don’t need any more books. I don’t need any more TV shows. Marie Kondo has shown me the light.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

The KonMari method is based on keeping items that bring you joy. JOY. There is no other determination. You touch each item and decide based on how it makes you feel.

This is my first success story. There is no relapse after this; there is no more stuff to get rid of. For the first time, I’ve found the way to discard items without feeling like something was lost, or feeling disappointed, or anxious. The KonMari method puts me in total control and allows me to have the final say. I make the decision, not some arbitrary date of when an item was last touched or used. Some almighty author doesn’t get to decide how much I care about my things, and how much time I spend sorting each subset of each item.

This is all new to me, but so far it’s been amazing. Over the holidays when I was off work, at home, taking care of Honey, I finished the book, and started in the order she recommends. She suggests going through your clothing first, and today I’ll discuss the first part of that process (I’ll follow up with the rest later). Feeling that this was going to be a big shift, I decided to take photos and keep records. I began with my tops.

Marie Kondo suggests that all items of one category must come out at one time. They must all be sorted at once. This not only allows you to make informed decisions, but for me, it also really brought my attention to the sheer number of things that I’d accumulated.

I had 220 tops. I couldn’t believe it. That’s more than any one human needs at one time. This included tanks, sweaters, t-shirts, blouses — all of it. Still, 220. I looked at the pile and felt both determined and ashamed. I’m happy to say that after my tidying session I’m down to 82 tops. Each one of them brings me joy in its own way. And though I felt a little anxious after parting with them, this was the first time that I’d bagged up my clothing and not felt compelled to go back through the bags. I let them go. I thanked them for their time, their lessons, and released them.

I questioned myself through the process; “Which of these feelings is joy?” I made myself a “maybe” pile. But I could tell, then, when I looked at the items I’d picked out first, the must keeps, I knew which items brought me joy and which did not. The process got easier and easier, and I became lighter and freer as I went on.

And I began to learn things about myself, like what my personal style truly is. And in addition to that, why I bought certain items but never wore them. It’s something for me to keep in the back of my head now, going forward — I’ll make more informed decisions when I do go out and shop. (And I already have. I’ve considered my available space and my tastes more, and I think it’s already made a difference.)

I folded all the tops based on her recommendations as well, and I love it. I can see everything, and now I have an idea and a picture in my head of what I own. This helps me know what might fit if I buy something new. And the hanging tops in my closet, for the first time in my life, have space between the hangers. The clothes can breathe. And I can see them.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get across what a huge deal it is to me to get rid of these things, and not only to get rid of them, to let them go and not look back. I don’t miss any of the items, and with each purge I feel liberated; clearer and more focused on my goals. I’m not looking at anything that needs cleaning, or sorting, or wishing things were easier to put away or to organize. It’s all there, it’s done, and the cleaning effort that usually felt so daunting is now easy and smooth, and completely stress-free. I’m more excited and determined than ever to release the items I have here that hold no joy for me. And I can’t wait to bring you with me on my KonMari journey.