This last weekend the mom's at our church got together for a clothing exchange. This was the first one we had all participated in and it was a blast. It was free shopping!! All the mom's with clothes to give dropped them off at my house at some point on Friday, a couple of the gals and I set them up throughout my house in an organized fashion. We had different rooms designated for either men's, women's or children's, from there they were organized by size. Our goal was to make it look and feel like a boutique, we even had signs for the restroom and a fitting room.
Saturday morning we opened up at 8 for those that had brought close to share and then the rest of the group from 9 to 12. We had breakfast goodies, coffee and juice ready for the shoppers. It was so much fun and a blessing to some of our friends! Everyone walked away with something new to them or for their family. It was so much fun to see one of the gals pick out something for a date night for her and her husband. Her and her husband were both so excited with what she put together. A great way to shop and truly save money!
All the clothes leftover will be donated this week to the Oppurtunity House, which is a home for mother's and their children. It's supported by a thirft shop.
I recommend trying this with your own church! Make sure you let everyone know it's coming up a few months ahead of time so they can start collecting clothes (and so they don't send them somewhere else in the meantime) and then make sure word gets out to remind them in the weeks before. Important things I will remember for next time is the more you have involved the better (we may do whole church). It will give the shoppers more to choose from and offer more sizes and styles. We might even try it with our High School/Jr. High girls and do a fashion show and make overs. Make it a great party and a time to talk about modesty. In this economy it was a great way to have fun for free and get some new life into our closets and a great way to bless our friends with what we didn't want anymore!
I recommend trying this with your own church! Make sure you let everyone know it's coming up a few months ahead of time so they can start collecting clothes (and so they don't send them somewhere else in the meantime) and then make sure word gets out to remind them in the weeks before. Important things I will remember for next time is the more you have involved the better (we may do whole church). It will give the shoppers more to choose from and offer more sizes and styles. We might even try it with our High School/Jr. High girls and do a fashion show and make overs. Make it a great party and a time to talk about modesty. In this economy it was a great way to have fun for free and get some new life into our closets and a great way to bless our friends with what we didn't want anymore!
Here are some pictures of the event and a few how-to's:
This is the "Women's" section. We have pant on the bench in, T-shirts on the table (separated by size and long sleeve/short sleeve. I recommend just doing by size) and the nice clothes hung and separated by sized (ask for donations of hangers, the more that can be hung, the easier it is for shoppers). We printed out signs (pink sticking up out of the middle) and then taped them to a straw and push pinned them onto the dowels. We used the ladder rungs as shelves for shoes. We bungee corded the closet rods to the ladders and then used the fireplace as the second anchor.
Men's department!
Children's department. Seperated into boys and girls and then by size and type of clothing. This was a tricky section to keep organized, but since we didn't have that many sizes or clothes it worked out ok. I used by shower rod to hang the clothes over by the computer.
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