Swap Drop

My closet is overflowing.  It is bursting at the seams with dresses, tights, skirts, sweaters, t-shirts, jackets, and tops.

This is nothing new.

There is an adage that for every one thing you bring into your house (err, closet) you should take one thing out.  A new dress means an old forgotten dress goes...and so on and so forth.  This rule may work in theory but it's never one that I have actually been able to follow. Just because I bought something new doesn't mean I don't still like the old.  Plus, who doesn't need more than one white blouse?  Or blue and white striped shirt?  Or black maxi dress?  Or polka dotted top? Or navy blue boat neck shirt?

You get the picture. 
 
I do try to weed through my clothes periodically.  Occasionally I'll fill a bag for donations quickly - the sweater that the moths managed to get to over the summer, the shirt that shrunk in the wash and was never the same, those pajama pants that are starting to lose their elasticity and no longer stay around my waist.  Dropping those off at Goodwill is always a nice feeling; out with the old, more room for the new. 

But then there are other clothes that I find much harder to get rid of, that are virtually impossible to add to that donate pile. Oh, I'll think to myself - that's the sweater I wore on the day I got offered my first publishing job.  Or that dress, there in the back of my closet, that's the one I wore for my 30th birthday celebration.  Oh and there's my plum cardigan, the one I haven't worn in years but I cannot bear to part with, for it went backpacking with me almost thirteen years ago and subsequently saw London, Paris, Venice, Munich, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and on and on and on with me.  Or there, yes, there's that dress I treated myself to on a rainy spring day when I lived in New York, on a day I had been feeling so blue. That is the dress that came along and lifted my spirits, making me happy for weeks on end after I purchased it.  No, I can't get rid of these items.  Not right now.  No thank you.  In the grand scheme of life, I realize they are just things.  But still, they are my things, with my memories.  I am not quite ready to let myself say goodbye just yet.  And so I let them stay. 

However, I recently started amassing a different pile of clothes, a third category of cast-offs.  These were items that were genuinely still in great shape, pieces still relatively on trend in flattering colors, cuts, and shapes.  They were too good to just sit in a garbage bag in the back of a donation center but too "old" for me personally.  They were pieces I was tired of simply because I felt I'd worn them into the ground. 

Enter the magic and beauty that is a clothing swap. 

My friend Jill is known for her clothing swaps.  They are legendary, I tell you.  Legendary.  When Jill moved back to Boston last year I immediately started dropping heavy hints (read: telling her) that she should host another swap.  (Why I wanted Jill to do the hosting versus just taking it upon myself to run one is something I'm not too clear on.  I believe the word I'm searching for is...lazy.)  Much to my delight, she agreed and yesterday, on one of the first really lovely spring days Boston has seen this year,  Jill ran another swap.  All I had to do was show up.  Which I did.  With a bottle of wine and a brown paper bag filled with clothes, shoes, costume jewelry and a few paperback books.

I'll be honest.  Before I arrived, I had a few moments of doubt coupled with the vaguest notions of panic.  People love Jill's clothing swaps!  What if: A) everyone hated every item of clothing I brought? Or worse: B) they actually made comments about why in the world I thought someone might actually want such and such sweater or such and such dress and why was I insulting their dressing intelligence with my donations?

Gulp.

Of course, here's the part where I tell you that I needn't have worried.  Jill acted as a terrific host and MC for the afternoon, picking items one by one out of our various bags, calling out a description of each article of clothing as well as the size before holding it up for the group to see.  There were no brawls, no fights over any of the garments.  Instead, what I found, for the few hours I sat in my friend's living room, was a genuine sense of camaraderie and support among this group of women, which lifted my spirits so much - spirits I hadn't even known needed lifting.  We oohed and ahhed together over certain pieces, we encouraged one another to try things on and if someone came back into the living room for a group opinion, there was nothing but support and honesty.  It was like heading to a dressing room with ten of your friends.  We laughed, we joked and we all went away with a pile of new - to us - clothes. It was like free shopping!  With wine!  And food!  And a grab all chance at the donated books and jewelry tables!  My kind of Sunday afternoon indeed.

Oh and as for those clothes I donated to our swap?  The ones I had been nervous no one would like?  There was one sweater, a gray cardigan from Ann Taylor, that I threw in at the very last minute.  I'd had the thing for years and was sick to death of it.  I pulled it from the bottom of my closet in preparation for the swap, thinking to myself that no one else was going to want the thing anymore than I did.  Still, with a shrug, I tossed it in the bag.  Yesterday, that sweater was one of the first things Jill pulled up for auction.  The minute she held it up for the group, a girl on the other side of the room exclaimed, without hesitation: "Oh!  That looks so nice and cozy!  I'll take it!"

My old gray cardigan - one that I had, once upon a time, exclaimed and gushed over myself, had found a new home where she would be loved and appreciated, could go on to better adventures than collecting dust in my closet.  Which is just what every gray cardigan deserves.  

Good thing too.  How else would I have room in my closet to add all of these new swap pieces that I'm giving a second life to?