*Disclaimer: These are my REAL opinions. Nobody from thredUP paid me to share my thoughts with anyone (*sadly*). If you think this site is as cool as I did, use this link and we’ll both get money (I think). Yay, free money!
We’re judged all the time. Watching your 11th episode of The Office in a row? Yes, Netflix – I’m still watching. I see that side-eye, cashier lady. I bought vegetables and healthy shit yesterday, okay – you don’t know my life. And nobody ever died from eating cereal for dinner, Mom. The kids love cereal night! While we’re not likely to escape the scorn and criticism that follows us around like student loan debt, I made a recent discovery that has helped me shred one particularly annoying type of criticism: the soul-crushing, day-ruining shade thrown by consignment store ladies.If you’ve ever mustered up the courage to take your beloved old clothes to a consignment shop, you know the judgement of which I speak. It’s really a masochistic practice when you think about it. You’re purposefully schlepping things you loved at some point and handing them over for perfect strangers to judge their value. Despite knowing full well this activity always brings me sadness, I still do it a few times a year. And inevitably, the exercise ends up being a complete waste of time – they take at most one thing from my sad bag of clothes and I leave feeling like a fashion reject with taste so crap I can’t even make it past the gatekeepers of Ye Olde Clothes Shoppe.
Enter thredUP! thredUP is the friendly neighborhood consignment shop you’ve always wanted: they sell your shit without the side of rejection that nobody needs in their life.
How it works
When you’re ready to unburden yourself of that way too expensive dress that you were “totally going to wear more than once so it’s worth the money!” or ditch those super cute shoes that never made it out of the box, take a spin on over to the thredUP website and request a “clean out bag.” They ship out a heavy-duty plastic bag for you to fill up with clothes, shoes and accessories (they even take kids’ stuff!).
Like your typical consignment shop, they only take name brand stuff and things that don’t look like they’ve taken a few too many spins around a washing machine. After my bag was full, I dropped it off at the post office (no postage needed). After a few weeks, my bag o’ stuff was processed and I got an email update on what they accepted and what they didn’t. The best part is that the stuff they don’t deem worthy to resell, they donate for you! Also, should you feel particularly charitable, they also have a donate-only option. After choosing the items they want to sell, they photograph them and load them up on the site. Once your items sell, you can cash out your earnings or you can use them toward purchasing other items on their site. There’s a ton more details of course – check out their FAQ here.
Best Reason to Try thredUP
There are tons of reasons to use a site like this: make a little money off your unwanted clothes, have someone else take flattering photos of your clothes so you can avoid those sad “clothes-laying-on-a-table” pictures on eBay, have your unwanted stuff go to charity, and so on. There is also the added benefit of participating in some seriously sustainable shopping. All great reasons. However, the best reason was an unexpected one. Finding this online consignment shop has brought me so much meaningless joy – it’s ridiculous. Let me explain. Once one of the items you send in sells, you get a friendly little email to let you know that somebody purchased your item.
Somebody, somewhere liked something that you liked – and paid money for it! Somehow, those emails gave me a completely unearned sense of accomplishment. Despite doing literally nothing (well, except sending in the bag full of stuff), I would get so super excited that something of mine sold. It was validation, acceptance and accomplishment all rolled into a cute, lazy little ball. Those emails were everything my confidence shredding trips to the consignment store weren’t. On a day full of missteps, poorly formed sentences in front of people you want to impress, godawful meetings where you accomplish nothing, those emails were a tiny bright spot in an otherwise failure-ridden day.
Who knew selling old clothes could be so uplifting?! So, if you’re needing to clear some space for the new holiday clothes you’re going to buy for yourself because you so obviously deserve it, order a bag and fill it up. You never know when you could use an email telling you that someone out there thinks you’re a snazzy dresser.
