Consigning My Life Away

Whew. It's been an action-packed weekend... Not necessarily fun, but satisfying and productive, at least! To begin with, I finished preparing tons of outgrown clothes for the Sweet Repeats Consignment Sale. If you're not familiar with children's clothing consignment, allow me to enlighten you. 

You take all of the seasonally appropriate clothing (in this case, Spring/Summer clothing) that haven been outgrown by your children and are still in good shape (no stains, tears, not too worn) to be placed in the sale for other parents to shop from and hopefully buy. After sorting through and cleaning the clothes, I label each of them with notecards with size and brand information, pin it on and hang it. As a reward for being a consigner, I get to shop for new-to-me clothing for my kids before non-consigners do. The consignment organizers take a small fee ($15 this time) plus a percentage of the sales from your clothes that others buy. My goal is to make enough only from selling old clothes to offset what I spend at the Sale on clothes that fit. The growing problem with this strategy is that the clothes currently being used by the Herd are getting too worn out to resell by the time two boys or two girls have outgrown them..... So this time I had to force myself to do the unthinkable.... Clean out and sort the baby clothes... A task that I had been putting off indefinitely. Not only is it an overwhelming, time-consuming job, it's a very emotional one for me as well.... To relive all of the mental images I have of each child wearing various pieces of clothing is wonderful but bittersweet... They seem to get growing faster everyday. So for a sentimental person like myself, this was a mentally AND physically draining project... But much needed. I needed the space in the closets... I needed the money to buy more clothes for the herd... And I needed to come to terms with the fact that I no longer have a baby, and that's really difficult when you've had four kids in the past seven years. So I began the process of dragging out 10+ plastic bags and containers of old clothing and the memories hit me like waves of the ocean. I decided to save special pieces of clothing for each child that had special memories attached to them, or have their names/initials monogrammed on them.... I think I will have a quilt made from them at some point... So I can literally cover myself with memories when I get melancholy about them getting older. Even though I may sound all mopey, I still look at it as a huge blessing that I've gotten to watch all four of them get older each day. 

I'm happy to report that I got 7 gorgeous, high end outfits apiece for each girl, and a pair of shoes for each boy for $200! Hopefully the sales from my consigned items will cover that and more.... Still have to get spring and summer clothes for the boys! Some of the new girls clothing is pictured here... I was lucky enough to find some pieces with the girls' first initials on them! How do you save money on kids' clothes? Have you ever found any amazing consignment deals?