It’s that time of year where we start making resolutions to clean up the house, lose some weight, and try to be fiscally responsible.

One way you can help organize your house and make some money while doing it is selling some of your gently used clothing online through a consignment shop. I remember doing something similar to this in college when I used to clean out my closet and take my items to Plato’s Closet and they would give me cash for the items they selected.

Doing this online is so much better (bigger market and less hassle).

Meet Swap.com.

Swap.com is a site I have used over the past year or so to get rid of those clothes that are no longer needed in my house.

The process is pretty straight forward.

Step 1 – Clean out your closet and dresser of any clothes that no longer fit or match your style (I don’t have a style, but if I did, I would do this step).

Step 2 – Separate clothes into two piles. One pile is for clothes that meet the following criteria.

• Clothing that’s clean and freshly laundered
• Void of stains and dirt
• No excessive wear (fading or pilling), holes or tears
• Items must be free of odor and pet hair
• All fasteners (zippers, snaps, buttons, ties) must be present and in working order
• Single items have to be worth $5 or more, original retail price.

All of the clothes that don’t fit these criteria, you can put into another pile (and I recommend sending them to charity using Give Back Box to speed up the process of donating for free).

Please note: Swap has a full list of Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s clothing they will and will not accept. Here is a brief view of the women’s clothing they do not accept.

Step 3 – Wash the clothes one last time. It might be silly, but you don’t want items rejected because they weren’t clean.

Step 4 – Find a box. It needs to be smaller than 20″x 20″x 17″. Once you have the box, load up the clean clothes until the box weighs just under 50 pounds (or is as full as you can get it).

Step 5 – Print a label off on Swap.com to send in the box to their warehouse. They make the process pretty easy and the money isn’t required up front (they taking the shipping charges off as you start to sell items).

Step 6 – Drop off the box and wait. It takes quite a bit of time (2-3 months) for them to receive the box, sort it, and list all of the items on their marketplace. In the mean time, you can finish cleaning up your house or reading more articles on the blog.

Step 7 – Let the sales roll in. Swap.com will list the items and price them for you. All you have to do is wait for them to sell.

Step 8 – Need quick cash? You can use the SureSell feature on the site to sell items directly to Swap.com for a fraction of the cost.

How much can you really make from this?

The average I have received per box has been roughly $100 (this comes from mine and my wife’s clothes).

Here is a break down of my boxes from the past few months.

Now get to cleaning and packing!

Chris Wilkey (CW)