What to Do With Unwanted Clothes, Shoes, and Accessories
Updated September 2026
Every closet clean-out ends the same way: a pile on the floor and no idea what to do with it. The default is a garbage bag to Goodwill, which is fine for some of it and actively unhelpful for the rest.
Most of that pile doesn’t belong in one place. Sorting it first is the whole game, and it takes about ten minutes.
Start by making four piles
Before you look up a single app, separate everything into these:
- Worth real money — designer, luxury, in-demand brands, anything with tags still on
- Sellable but ordinary — good condition, recognizable brands, nothing special
- Wearable but not sellable — fine to wear, no resale value, or you just want it gone today
- Worn out — stained, torn, pilled, stretched, single socks, ancient bras
Pile 4 is the one most people get wrong. Donating damaged clothing doesn’t help a thrift store — it costs them labor to sort and money to dispose of. There’s a better answer for that pile, and it’s further down.
Pile 1: Items actually worth money
If a piece would resell for $100 or more, it’s worth handling deliberately rather than dumping into a bulk service.
Luxury consignment (The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective) makes sense for designer handbags, shoes, and fine jewelry. They authenticate, photograph, and price for you. The RealReal’s commission scales with how much you sell — higher volume, better cut. Vestiaire charges a tiered commission that lands somewhere in the 12–25% range depending on sale price. You’ll wait for a payout, but you’ll clear far more than any walk-in counter would give you.
Selling it yourself nets the most per item if you’re willing to photograph and list. More on platforms below.
The thing to avoid: sending a $400 coat into a bulk clean-out service. You’ll get a fraction of what it’s worth.
Pile 2: Sellable, and you have to decide how much effort you want
This is where most of the pile lands, and it’s really a trade between money and time.
If you want the most money and don’t mind the work
You photograph, list, price, and ship. Fees as of 2026:
| Platform | What they take | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Vinted | 0% from sellers — buyers pay a protection fee | Everyday clothing; smaller US buyer pool but growing fast |
| Depop | 0% commission, ~3.3% + $0.45 processing | Vintage, Y2K, trend-driven pieces; younger audience |
| Mercari | 10% | General goods, not just fashion |
| eBay | ~13.6% plus a per-order fee | Widest audience; strong for shoes, outerwear, unusual items |
| Poshmark | 20% over $15, flat $2.95 under | Largest US fashion audience; fee includes a prepaid label |
Poshmark’s 20% is the highest here, but it bundles shipping and buyer protection, and it has the biggest pool of fashion buyers in the US. Vinted’s zero fee is genuinely zero — the buyer covers the platform’s cut — but you’ll typically wait longer for a sale.
A note on effort: listing takes real time. Ten to fifteen minutes per item once you factor in photos, measurements, and answering questions. If you have forty pieces, be honest with yourself about whether that’s an evening or a month.
If you want it handled for you
ThredUp is the big one, and it has changed substantially since it launched. Here’s the current shape of it:
- You either print a free label and use your own box, or pay $2.99 to have a Clean Out Kit bag mailed to you
- A $14.99 processing fee comes out of your earnings ($34.99 for the Premium tier, which has a higher acceptance rate)
- Payouts run on a sliding scale by price tier — cheap items earn a small single-digit percentage, higher-end pieces earn substantially more
- Items they reject are donated or recycled unless you pay $10.99 to have them shipped back
- They accept women’s and kids’ apparel only — men’s items get rejected and won’t earn you anything
- Accepted items still have to sell within a consignment window. A meaningful share don’t, and the payout you expected can shrink or vanish
They’ve also added Direct Listing, where you photograph and price the item yourself with a $20 minimum and keep 100% of your listed price. It’s a genuinely different deal from the classic Clean Out Kit — more work, dramatically better economics.
The store-credit angle still works. ThredUp partners with hundreds of brands through its Resale-as-a-Service program, and you can take your payout as credit with a participating retailer instead of cash. Reformation was the very first partner back in 2018 and the program is still running. If you already shop somewhere that participates, the credit is usually worth more than the cash equivalent. If you don’t, take the cash.
Set expectations accordingly. Bulk clean-out services are a convenience product. You are paying — in fees and in a much smaller cut — to not do the work. That’s a reasonable trade if the alternative is the bag sitting in your trunk for eight months. It is not a way to make money.
If you want cash today
Walk-in buy counters give you an offer on the spot:
- Buffalo Exchange pays 25% of their selling price in cash, or 50% in store credit. Men’s and women’s, current styles through vintage.
- Crossroads Trading pays up to 40% cash or 45% in store credit, and skews trendier.
- Plato’s Closet targets teen and young-adult brands and is very selective about how recent an item is.
- 2nd Street and Uptown Cheapskate are worth checking if either is near you.
Store credit is always the better rate if you’d actually shop there. Expect most of what you bring to come back home with you — that’s normal, not a judgment on your closet.
Pile 3: Good condition, not worth selling
Donate it. But donating to a specific place beats donating to a general one, because the item actually gets used instead of baled and shipped overseas.
- Interview and work clothes → Dress for Success for women, Career Gear for men. Both want suits, blazers, blouses, structured handbags, and work-appropriate shoes.
- Shoes of any kind → Soles4Souls distributes wearable footwear globally and uses it to seed micro-businesses.
- Bras → Free the Girls gives them to survivors of trafficking, who resell them as a source of income. Any size, any style, good condition.
- Formalwear and prom dresses → Becca’s Closet and similar local programs.
- Everything else → Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, Vietnam Veterans of America. VVA will schedule a pickup, which matters if you don’t have a car.
Call ahead or check the site. Affiliates set their own rules, and several have gotten stricter about what they’ll take.
Pile 4: The worn-out stuff
This is the pile everyone throws away. Textiles are recyclable — fiber gets turned into insulation, carpet padding, and industrial rags — but almost none of it gets there.
Check local options first. A growing number of cities offer curbside textile pickup or dedicated drop-off bins, and it costs you nothing. Earth911’s recycling search will tell you what’s available at your zip code. Don’t pay to ship clothes across the country if there’s a bin four blocks away.
Mail-in bags if there’s nothing local:
- Trashie’s Take Back Bag accepts clothing, underwear, socks, handbags, shoes, sheets, and towels in any condition, and gives you rewards credit for each registered bag.
- Retold Recycling starts around $14.50 for a single bag, with subscription options, and takes all textiles including scraps and single socks.
Brand take-back programs for specific categories: Madewell recycles denim of any brand into housing insulation, and Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe turns athletic shoes into court and track surfaces. Call the store first — participation varies by location.
Skip TerraCycle boxes for general textiles unless a brand is subsidizing it. The consumer pricing starts around $160.
The short version
| You have… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Designer or luxury | Luxury consignment |
| Good brands, time to spare | Vinted, Depop, eBay, or Poshmark |
| Good brands, no time | ThredUp — knowing the fees |
| Need cash today | Buffalo Exchange or Crossroads |
| Wearable, no resale value | Targeted donation |
| Damaged or worn out | Local textile recycling, then a mail-in bag |
The best system is the one you’ll actually finish. A bag that sits in your car for a year because you were going to list everything on eBay has done less good than the same bag dropped at Goodwill on a Tuesday.
Fees and program details change often — ThredUp in particular has restructured several times. Verify current terms before you ship anything.
Until next time!
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