This is part of my series on Decluttering Mental Models.

When people declutter, they often ask, “Should I try selling my clothes?” The answer to this question is complicated and depends on your unique situation. Factors include: how much time you have, how tight your budget is, etc.

So here’s a simple rule that I follow: Only sell clothes when you can make at least $15 per hour doing so.

Selling unwanted clothes can be thought of as a side business. And if your side business doesn’t earn you $15 an hour, then it’s not worth your time.

Let’s walk through a few ways that you can sell clothes and see how this rule applies:

1. Selling clothes online

Each item sold consumes about an hour of your time. You’ll want to take and upload good photos, write a good listing, check that the price point is competitive, answer questions from potential buyers, process transactions, and ship the item to its new owner. All of these activities add up to about an hour.

So if you can earn $15 from an item, then sell it. Otherwise, toss it into the donate/recycle pile. This is a good baseline.

But let’s go a step further. Half of the stuff you list online will never sell. So for two shirts, you’ll spend close to two hours on photos, listings, talking with potential buyers, etc. In the end, you’ll want $30 in your pocket. This means you need to list your shirts for $30 each.

How many of your shirts will realistically sell for $30? If you’re like me, the answer is a big fat zero.

2. Consignment stores

When I was a kid, my Grandma made a few bucks consigning her Sunday church dresses. But the consignment store was 30 minutes away and the money she earned barely covered the price of gas. (She was friends with the store’s owner, so the monthly trips doubled as a social call and weren’t a total waste.)

So go ahead and consign clothes as long as you can earn $15 per hour. Personally, I don’t own enough nice clothes to make it worthwhile. But maybe you do.

3. Garage sales

A successful garage sale will gobble 15 hours of your time. Think about how long it takes to make signs, put signs up, price everything, put everything outside, have the actual sale, bring unsold items inside, take signs down and dispose of them.

Will you earn at least $225 ($15/hr x 15 hours) from a garage sale? Or will this be a low-wage gig on top of everything else you have to do?

Do you want to wait for hours for buyers who promise to “come back with money”? (When I was 11, some guy promised to come back “in a few minutes” to buy a double bed we were selling. We never saw him again.)

Personally, I’ve never run a garage sale. When I’m ready to get rid of a bag of clothes or some old books, I just donate them. Or put them in the trash. As soon as I identify unwanted items, I get rid of them.

But I have friends and family who ran garage sales and made a few hundred dollars. For them, it was probably worth it.

More Decluttering Mental Models:

Top 10 Favorites

  1. How I answer the question: “What if I need this later?”
  2. “The Container strategy” will simplify your decluttering
  3. Selling clothes is for suckers (unless you earn $15/hour)
  4. Wait 48 hours before buying stuff
  5. 21 questions to ask before you buy
  6. The radical way to measure wealth, part 1 and part 2
  7. We’re trained to be dissatisfied with what we have (and how to fix this)
  8. Clear clutter by zoning your home
  9. How screen time kills your motivation to declutter
  10. Dear car dealers: I don't want a "free" T-shirt with your logo

Get started

  1. Clear clutter by zoning your home
  2. How I answer the question: “What if I need this later?”
  3. “The Container strategy” will simplify your decluttering
  4. Hold each item and ask, “Does this spark joy?”
  5. When the “Does this Spark Joy?” fails you, ask these 6 questions
  6. Create your “Discard by Feb. 2022” box
  7. Decluttering yearbooks? Ask these 8 questions first

Shopping

  1. 21 questions to ask before you buy
  2. Wait 48 hours before buying stuff - version 1 and version 2
  3. How a grocery shopping list saves me time, money, and pounds

Manage your clothes

  1. Selling clothes is for suckers (unless you can earn $15/hour)
  2. Dear Dude with too many T-shirts: no one wants to buy them—just recycle/trash them
  3. Don't be like my friend Giorgio with his 400 Hawaiian shirts
  4. None of my clothes "spark joy"—so what do i get rid of?

Happiness & satisfaction

  1. Limit pleasurable things so they don’t lose their novelty
  2. We’re trained to be dissatisfied with what we have (and how to fix this)
  3. Craving never stops and my potato chip addiction
  4. Reminder: happiness levels stay consistent

Get motivated

  1. Want to boost your motivation to declutter? Immerse yourself in decluttering videos, podcasts, & books!
  2. How screen time kills your motivation to declutter
  3. Imagine your ideal home… Imagine all the clutter is gone…
  4. Feeling unmotivated? Declutter with a 5-minute time box

Manage your money

  1. The radical way to measure wealth, part 1 and part 2
  2. Save money by controlling aspirational identities
  3. I wasted so much money starting projects (and how I fixed it)

Manage consumption spirals

  1. How consumption spirals work
  2. Buying a house led to an enormous consumption spiral
  3. How craving completeness drives my consumption

Shift your Paradigm

  1. Change your environment, change your consumption
  2. 3 thought experiments to adopt a decluttering mindset
  3. Your home is not a storage unit for other people's crap!
  4. Before you buy stuff, do this little mental exercise
  5. Less space, less stuff
  6. That’s right, you and I pay for the privilege of seeing viagra ads
  7. Your home is an expensive container for your stuff. What’s your cost per sqft?

Manage your emotions

  1. Can you tolerate boredom?
  2. Fill the void with a long term goal

Control the Clutter

  1. Dear car dealers: I don't want a "free" T-shirt with your logo