The Super Fun Guide to Sustainable Wardrobe Decluttering

aka: What to do with the clothes you no longer need but the op shop probably doesn't want either

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

I’m a really Fun Person. And a particularly Fun Mum. So fun, in fact, that the first day of every school holidays involves a sleep in, pancakes for breakfast, and a few hours spent decluttering everyone’s wardrobes. YAY! SO FUN!

What makes this even MORE FUN is my desire to avoid:

1. Dumping our unwanted clothes into landfill

2. Dumping our unwanted clothes at the local op shop/thrift store/charity who will in turn send most of it to landfill anyway

3. Dumping our unwanted clothes onto developing nations who are already choking on the world’s crappy hand-me-downs

So, considering we’re about to start the winter school holidays (FUN TIMES AHEAD, KIDS!) I thought I’d pull together a list of ways I try to keep wardrobe decluttering sustainable and so so FUN*.

(*It’s not that fun. Maybe try playing some Lizzo to make it more fun?)

Photo by kemal alkan on Unsplash

If you’ve spent much time around the whole slow living movement, you’ve likely seen a lot of information on how to create a slower or more sustainable wardrobe. It no doubt would have included advice like:

• Buy less (like, way less)

• Find friends/family you can swap with or pass on/receive hand-me-downs from

• Buy second-hand

• Learn how to discern good quality clothes (which is not necessarily the highest priced) and buy the best you can afford

• Learn how to look after the clothes you have (follow washing instructions, wash only when dirty, line dry when possible etc)

• Buy ethically made and/or natural fibres

• Repair damaged and worn clothing to extend its life.

All good! All helpful! Somewhat overwhelming! But also, not always accessible or achievable.

My advice: do your best with what you’ve got. What that looks like will change over time, and that’s okay.

It’s the flip-side I’m more interested in right now anyway. That is, what do we do with the clothes we no longer need?

To start with, the usual suggestions:

Sell good quality items on eBay, Depop and about a million other online consignment stores. This is a good way of playing into the circular economy and making a little bit of money while doing so. Just beware that there is often quite a bit of time spent photographing, listing, communicating with buyers and shipping items, so you want to make sure you’re getting value for your efforts. It also might be helpful to give your items an expiry date. That is, if they don’t sell by a particular time, pass them on to an op shop.

Give good quality items to op shops or thrift stores. And “good quality” means things you would be comfortable giving to a friend — if the quality is less than that, the op shop won’t be able to sell them and will instead send them offshore or to landfill, where they become entirely different problems.

Hand-me-downs. Find family/friends with kids younger than yours and ask if they would like the (good quality) clothes that no longer fit your family. I reckon half of our kids’ wardrobes were hand-me-downs up to the age of about 10, and it was awesome.

Host a community clothes swap or start one with your mates.

Donate school/sports uniforms. See if your school, sports club or team have a uniform pool for good quality second-hand gear.

Photo by Francois Le Nguyen on Unsplash

So far, so fun, right? But what about the stuff that doesn’t fit into any of these categories? What about the clothes that are too ratty to sell? Too far gone or too low-quality to repair? Too worn out to give to op shops/thrift stores? The old uniforms or promotional gear that no-one would buy? Are they destined to rot in landfill for the next few hundred years? (Or, if you’re like me, are they destined to sit in the guest bedroom for many months because you can’t find a better solution and the thought of throwing them away is too stressful?)

Maybe. But not as much of it as you might think.

To follow, the not-so-usual suggestions:

Create a hierarchy of clothes. That is, once certain items are no longer good for wearing in public, kick them down the clothing pyramid. Maybe a perfectly fine if not a little stretched t-shirt could become your new PJs (obviously, if you’re in an era of life where wearing baggy T-shirts to bed is not conducive to happy sexy times then feel free to ignore this.) Or they can shuffle on down the hierarchy and become workout gear, yardwork clothes or things you wear when painting. Further still, they might be good for cleaning (odd socks are great for dusting and old t-shirts make good polishing cloths) or cut into strips and used as garden/plant ties.

See if your local op shop has a solution for unsellable clothes. For example, in Australia, Vinnies accepts clothing items that aren’t sellable and uses them to make bags of cleaning rags or upcycles them into products like rugs for the RE/CYCLE brand. (We have one of the larger rugs in our living room. It’s soft and colourful and cost about $30. I really like it.)

Check which retailers near you offer an in-store recycling service. Patagonia, H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, Rebel Sport (shoes only) will take your unwanted old clothes and will either donate them to charity or turn them into products like insulation, gym mats and kids’ playgrounds. Just drop the clothes off in-store.

Ask on Facebook. Offer up a bulk bag of (clean, hygienic but unsellable) clothes on your local Buy Swap or Sell group on social media. Wildlife carers, enthusiastic upcyclers, artists and the like may have a use for them.

Look at using a clothing recycling service such as:

• Upparel (Australia)

• Retold Recycling (USA)

• The First Mile (UK)

These services will take a bag or box of your clothes (for a small fee) and sort them. Anything sellable will be sold, anything unsellable will be turned into rags, new fabric, or products like insulation, consumer products and packaging.

Turn your old clothes into yarn. You can make a stretchy yarn from old t-shirts or a twisted, cotton rag rope from things like old sheets and non-stretchy items like shirts, and then use them to weave or crochet things like baskets, foot stools and bags. Obviously this one takes a LOT of time (I have had a box of old clothes in our wardrobe for at least 18 months that I’m slowly turning into both t-shirt yarn and rag rope, with the plan to make a foot stool… I’ll let you know how that goes) but if you’re crafty and like the idea of upcycling, give it a go. Or maybe you know someone who is and would be happy to take some of your unwanted clothes.

Compost your clothes. If you have clothes made of 100% natural fibres like cotton or hemp, you can shred them up finely and add them (minus any trim, buttons or zips obvs) to your compost heap. They will eventually break down and go back to the soil.

Donate to animal shelters, vets and wildlife carers. Give them a call first, but in my experience, places like this have a big need for items like towels, bedding and woolly jumpers, and will gratefully accept clean donations.

Recycle uniforms and workwear. In Australia, a business is responsible for textile waste that is produced as a result of corporate uniforms and workwear, which means when you update your uniform or the old ones wear out, your employer needs to find a way of managing them. Talk to your employer, and let them know about programs like Loop Upcycling — who will take old corporate uniforms and workwear and turn it into new, usable products for you.

Handmade fabric twine and image via Cintia at My Poppet

But none of these solutions is perfect!

Yes, it’s true. This list is missing something. The Ideal Solution. The one that takes no extra time, money or effort, and manages to take away our unwanted clothes with zero compromise required.

I think that’s because… *checks notes*… Ah, yes. It’s because we don’t live in an ideal world.

As annoying as that is, in the interests of not getting overwhelmed, I think we should just do what we can, try to buy a little less so that we have fewer things to get rid of down the track, and remember to put on some Lizzo and have a bit of fun (because I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% doin’ my best.*)

(*Sorry.)

Sunrise out the back door a couple of weeks ago. The sky was the prettiest colour.

Just a quick reminder:

A big part of slow living for me right now is ramping down my work where possible when the kids are on school holidays. This means I’ll be taking two weeks off from posting here, starting next week.

The regular monthly 1% post will hit inboxes/app on Sunday for paying subscribers, and I‘ll be back on deck with normal posting the week starting July 17.

Honestly, I get so nervous every time the school holidays roll around, because taking time off from here feels scary. The hustling voices tell me I should be writing more, creating more, posting more, and it’s hard sometimes not to listen. But then I remember that I don’t want to hustle, I want to be well. I want to write and create and connect and find joy and parent with my heart and grow and change and laugh and dance, and I can’t do any of those things if I burn myself out at the altar of hustle.

Plus, it helps me to remember that every time I do take a break, I come back with a different perspective or a new idea, and I have never, ever even once regretted it. I also remember that it’s a lot of fun pushing back against the status quo.

Also, I literally just read this piece on

The Hyphen by Emma Gannon

about Lewis Capaldi’s recent decision to step back from music to focus on his own health and agree with so much of it, including this:

When our health is concerned, we actually don’t owe anyone anything. We all have our very own kryptonite. We all have something that flares up, swells up, shows up more frequently when something is off, when we are in need of a break — some much more than others. It’s an extremely personal thing. Quitting for a bit, or forever, if something is no longer working for you deserves applause. If you want to light up a room, there needs to be some sort of major extra replenishment going on. You can’t shine that brightly without self-protection, a serious game-plan and daily rituals that seem kind of boring.

Thanks for another brilliant ten weeks here on The Tortoise. I feel like we’re finding our feet, I’m finding a rhythm, and we as a community are beginning to grow into ourselves.

I can’t wait to see what the next term offers!

I’m Currently…

Shaking my head at how long this post took me to write. I mean, my brain fog is pretty rough at the moment, but still. I feel like I’ve been thinking my way through mud! (SO FUN!)

Enjoying Silo, the Apple TV adaptation of Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy. We’re only one episode in but so far it’s exactly like I pictured when reading the book, and I hope it sticks. (I know I said Last of Us was next on our list but this one skipped ahead given how much I loved the books when I first read them a few years ago.)

Craving salt water. When we first moved to the highlands we went swimming at The Farm in the middle of winter and I maintain that I’m going to do it again. I have been maintaining that for more than four years now, but maybe this is the year I do it. I’ve got a bone-deep need for the ocean and her healing.

Listening to the black cockatoos outside again. They’ve been around a lot lately.

Looking forward to next week’s wardrobe declutter! FUN FUN FUN!

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I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week, and that your summer/winter is offering up some lovely slow moments.
Brooke xx