Selling Your Clothes to Make Money

By Maria Martinez
Blog Content Contributor

College students are always broke. We usually try to have a weekly or monthly budget, but it never goes as planned. If you are looking for a way to get some extra cash, there is one easy to do it.  You can just grab the stuff that has been hanging on your closet that you don’t even use, and sell it.

There are a variety of options locally and online where we can sell our things.

Plato’s Closet

Plato’s Closet typically buys the current styles that are still in the mall. They have over 450 locations throughout North America, which makes it a renowned store.

They typically buy brands like: Forever 21, Steve Madden, Topshop, Xhilaration and more.

How it works is that you take your clothing and accessories and they review your items. After reviewing, the store creates an offer based on style, condition and brand. If you accept the offer they give you your money on the spot.

Retro Exchange

“Buy, Sell, Trade” is Retro Exchange’s motto. This thrift store takes in trendy, gently-used clothing. They offer trade-ins for either cash back or store credit to their sellers. If you choose to get cash back, they give 30% back from what they buy from you. Or if you decide to earn store credit, they will give you 50% worth of credit.

Retro Exchange is located on the Square, and its main focus is helping San Marcos students.

ThredUp

ThredUp is an online thrift store. The way it works is you first order a Clean Out Kit, which is where you pack the stuff you are trying to sell. Buyers evaluate each item you sent, and after this process, they will send you an email stating how much your bag was worth.

A cool thing they have is the payout estimator, where you can select the brand and category of what you are sending, and you get an estimate of how much money you could get for your item. The amount you’re paid depends on the original price, brand and category of each item.

From all of this options, I decided to go to Plato’s because I had visited the store and I liked what they had. They have some of the trends that I am wearing right now in the store.

It took me almost a day to decide what I wanted to get rid off. I have a hard time detaching from my stuff, so I just stared at my closet trying to choose what I could live without. Most of the things I chose were clothes that I hadn’t used in ages, but still it was hard letting them go.

I took clothes, shoes and scarves. From all the things that I took they only bought eight. They gave me $25, which I thought was not bad. They did not buy everything because some things were very old and were not trendy anymore, which is important to them.

I liked that they also gave me a customer appreciation card because I bought some items from the store. For every $10 you spend, they stamp your card. After 20 stamps, you can redeem the card to get 20% off your next purchase in Plato’s Closet.

Selling clothes you don’t use anymore is a great idea. First of all, you will cut the clutter; many things are just taking up space in your room and it would be best to get rid off them. Another great reason is that with the money you get, you can buy new clothes. Well, that is what I did, but you don’t have to. You can save the money or use it to help you pay your bills.