Remember back in the day when you’d covet your best friend’s sweater, and you’d ask her to trade it for that purse of yours she had her eyes on?
Instead of swapping just one item, what if you overhauled your entire closet, and invited your closest friends over to trade?
Sounds like fun? Welcome to the “swap party” trend where friends trade clothing, books, fine artwork, housewares and more. These parties are considered a great alternative to consigning or yard sales; an excuse to clean out your closets; and a great-for-the-environment practice.
So gather your friends, shop one another’s closets, and enjoy the company.
To ensure the party is fun and transactions run smoothly, here are some tips to throw a successful swap party:
1. Invite friends with similar taste and/or in a range of sizes if you’re swapping clothing. Make sure there is at least one other person with a similar size for each individual invited. For a good variety of merchandise, choose a fair amount of people. Eight people is a manageable number, though anywhere from 3 to 15 is doable.
2. Take a risk. Use the party as a way to get items you desire, but maybe wouldn’t or haven’t purchased.
3. Have plenty of snacks and drinks available to ensure guests’ appetites are satiated while they raid the loot. (Avoid a potluck since guests will already be lugging items.)
4. Have guests arrive an hour or hour and a half before you begin swapping. That way, items can be laid out neatly and guests can enjoy a cocktail or two.
5. A swap could get out of hand if there’s a cashmere sweater or a Le Creuset Dutch oven up for grabs. To maintain order, ask guests to bring clean, gently used items; establish a system, such as color coding desired items, using tokens to designate items a person can swap for, or grouping kids’ items by age. Make the system clear prior to the party; and ensure everyone goes home with as many items as they brought.
6. Create a display space for the items. For example, set up a rack for clothing or a table for purses, books or housewares.
7. To keep the swap from looking like a junk sale, use bins to keep the room tidy and suggest that guests limit the number of items.
8. Provide shopping bags or encourage guests to bring bags to take their new items home with them.
9. For leftover items, contact your local Goodwill to find out whether pickup service is available in your area ((800) 664-577), or go to Goodwill.org; The Salvation Army, at (800) 728-7825 or go to Satruck.org to find a local branch and to see if there is pickup service in your area; or contact Dress for Success, an organization accepts women’s interview-appropriate attire, at Dressforsuccess.org.
10. Don’t want to host a party? Try swapping via the web, where you can trade clothing with thousands of others. Sites like SwapStyle.com or RehashClothes.com allow you to join groups of other like-minded shoppers looking for similar styles or sizes, search for items you want, and initiate, accept and reject trades with other members. If you have a designer dress hanging in the back of your closet that you’ve only worn once, or a pair of high-end heels that kill your feet, try ReFashioner.com, which specializes in pricier items.
Sources: Realsimple.com; Oprah.com; Alwaysorderdessert.com; Pinterest.com.
