Clothing Swap Success ... and Weight Loss Success

My mom raised me with an appreciation of shopping secondhand, as well as wearing the very nice hand-me-downs from her friend's daughter. This appreciation has not been lost on me as I have aged. I still love shopping secondhand - it's cheap and "green" and you are likely supporting a worthy charitable cause. If you have enough time to dig through the racks, I promise you can find some awesome stuff in great condition at a cheap price.

However, my friends and I also appreciate something even better: Clothing swaps!

If you've never heard of it, basically you collect all the clothes/shoes/accessories you would otherwise donate to a resale store, and get together with your friends who have done the same, and then start going through each other's stuff, and keeping what you want. One woman's bound-for-Goodwill clothing is another woman's new work outfit. Best of all? It's free. And you don't have to weed through overstuffed racks of crap to find good stuff.

One of my friends held such a party on Friday night, but I didn't make it. However, I was able to stop by her place on Saturday night, and she let me take all of the leftovers. It was about 20 or so bags worth of stuff. I had to do a lot of shoving, but I somehow fit it all in the trunk of my tiny car.

This plus 5 more bags I had already carried upstairs

It took me almost all of Sunday to go through the bags (I did stop to run 7 miles, shower, and eat lunch and later dinner). I ended up keeping this for myself:

I need better lighting. I promise those are piles of clothes.

Mostly a lot of  skirts, dresses, and tops, but also scarves, belts, coats, shoes, bags ... needless to say, I don't need to go shopping anytime soon. Which is good, because I haven't been shopping for anything other than running clothes for the past few months, and with all the running some of my clothes are getting a little baggy on me.

Because ... I fit into size 8 again! I don't think that has happened since college. So not only did I get tons of new and free clothes, but I had a major ego boost knowing that I am down two dress sizes from a year ago. (Of course women's sizing is so messed up. I'd actually consider myself a size 10, but depending on the brand, size 8 or 12 might fit better. However a year ago, in some brands, size 12 was fitting a little snug.)

The rest of the clothing leftovers will probably be brought to a future Clothing Swap Party at my sister-in-law's dance studio. So, if you're local to me, feel free to join us!

Do you like to shop resale? Have you ever attended a clothing swap party? 


P.S. - Did you know that I'm doing an Active Bands giveaway in exchange for $5 donations to the American Cancer Society? :)