So, maybe you're a little bit—ahem—overzealous when it comes to shopping. (We feel you.) The good news: A collection of amazing websites allows you to take the contents of your over-packed closet and turn it into cold hard cash. Almost as good? Selling or swapping your clothes, bags, shoes and jewelry online allows you to free up space in your cluttered drawers and closets—and make room for a continual rotation of fabu new stuff. It's a major win-win, we say!
Here are the best places to do it right now:
How happy would it make you if a special item you no longer wear finds a home with someone who'll love it just as much—and actually wear it? The idea behind Threadflip is to make selling your stuff personal. Users can easily upload photos of the clothes, bags, shoes and jewelry they're ready to part with, and thousands of such items for sale are added to the site every day. Bonus: Threadflip's "White Glove Service" makes things even easier by sending out a box for you to place your items in, and they'll take care of everything from there. Plus, the site just rolled out a brand-new feature that might just encourage you to spend more time hanging out, browsing and getting inspired in addition to just selling or shopping: "My feed" launched on Aug. 1 and shows you other brands and users that are relevant to your tastes and interests—think Pinterest—and it's available on the app and website alike.
Designer addict? The Real Real might be your go-to: The site offers pre-owned designer labels like Hermès, Chanel, Gucci and Cartier at (wait for it) as much as 90 percent off their original retail prices. You can consign your stuff and make 60 percent of an item’s price (70 percent once your items sell $5,000 per year). Or of course, just come to the Real Real to do some high-end shopping, with the assurance that everything's been fully vetted and evaluated by experts for authenticity.
If you and your smartphone are joined at the hip, PoshMark might be your best fit for selling. With PoshMark, you can create listings of your items for sale using Instagram-like filters straight from your iPhone. When you make a sale, PoshMark provides a pre-paid and pre-addressed shipping label for you to package and ship your item out to its lucky new owner via ordinary USPS or free home pickup. And you get 80 percent of the selling price.
Become a member of Refashioner to shop, sell or swap clothes. For sellers, it's easy to photograph your pieces and the site's "Fashion Police" will vet them (It's nothing personal if your gear doesn't make the cut! They're just curating the shopping experience). When you make a sale from your "closet"—a.k.a. your personal homepage, you get an email with a prepaid mailing label all ready for the USPS. The site charges a flat 22 percent commission on each deal.
Maybe you've been shopping on eBay for years, but did you consider it as a place to make some extra cash, for instance by selling your old jewelry? The huge-scale auction site makes it easy, allowing you to check on the average selling price of similar items listed for sale across the site if you're clueless as to your items' value. Plus, you get a massive audience when selling on eBay versus boutique sites.
Have you ever sold clothing online?
Alesandra Dubin is a Los Angeles-based writer and the founder of home and travel blog Homebody in Motion. Follow her on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
A version of this story originally appeared on iVillage.