ThredUp Clothing Consignment

Someone once told me every time you buy something new, you should purge something else you don’t need. It seemed like a good rule of thumb and definitely worth a try — keyword, try — and is the reason that, at any given time, there may be a donate bag somewhere in my possession.

After years of donating clothes, trying my luck on eBay and in consignment shops, it seemed like a lot of running around — which is why I decided to try ThredUp. The online clothing store and consignment shop acts as a convenient middle-man between shoppers and sellers.

Here is how it really works:

Users go to the site under Clean Out and shop through their closet for their best clothing they no longer wear or need. ThredUp is really looking for high-quality items, name brands, clean, less than 5 years old — preferably with tags and in near-mint condition. This is all to say, they are going to be choosey with the items you send.

Once you’ve picked your best and brightest, you can either ship yourself in your own box with a free label or purchase the ThredUp shipping bag and drop it off at a USPS location. Trying to maximize profit, I chose the free label option and shipped myself.

I signed up online, printed my free shipping label and sent only my best items to be sold.

On average, ThredUp only accepts 40 percent of the clothing you ship, which says something about the standards and the quality of the clothing from a shopper’s standpoint.

A good way to determine if the entire process is worth your time, check out the payout estimator. You can get a good idea of what you have to sell and what exactly you stand to make.

If you do have accepted and sold clothing, payment is pretty instantaneous, unlike physically selling with a consignment store.

Who ThredUp works for:

If you have great stuff too good to toss, but that you really don’t need in your possession or to make a ton of money on, go for it. It’s pretty easy to use ThredUp and it’s fun cleaning out space in your closet.

If you want to make some money on higher ticket items, I suggest you keep those for yourself and try your hand selling online — you stand to make more money and it’s a lot less back and forth through the mail.