#secondhand september

I have been seeing so many posts in the last week about doing a closet purge.  Which, I kinda get because the seasons are changing? But how you do it is an important part of what Secondhand September is all about!!

One important part of the slow fashion way of life is thinking about what happens to our belongings when we no longer need them. That means it's time to discuss how the secondhand system can be more equitable and less wasteful!

How can we ensure that the people who need things like clothes and home goods are getting them?

Like everything we discuss around here, no question has simply one answer.

But there is something we can do as individuals to ensure that more people are getting the things they need: something I call "Mindful Rehoming."

The facts about the fate of thrift store donations are pretty grim: only 10-20% will be resold by the store. The balance will either be sold off to someone else, downcycled/shredded, enter the global secondhand clothing trade, or end up in the landfill. When you know this, it makes donation a lot less appealing, right? In fact, it becomes hard to imagine that any of our stuff will end up with someone who needs it.

If your priorities are maximizing the use of your stuff and ensuring it gets to people who need it, then the donation bin should be your last resort. Because in the world of “mindful rehoming,” we take the time and effort to redistribute our belongings to others who truly need/want them. Yes, it takes time. Forethought. A lot of posting and googling and messaging. But it’s true circularity in action: getting these important items to someone who truly needs them, rather than passing them off to a thrift store that might just send them off to the landfill. Or charge money for these items, putting them out of reach financially for others who are truly in need.

It's still Secondhand September, so we are exploring many different ways we can live a #SecondhandFirst way of life. Most conversations about secondhand are shopping focused, but that's not the only way to keep clothing in circulation! A good old fashioned clothing swap is a great way to "shop" secondhand while also meeting some new people and hanging out with the slow fashion community!

Last September I released an episode (episode 212) with Sam, the founder and CEO of @bereworn, a platform that helps people find and host clothing swaps. She shared a lot of great advice…that I am now sharing with you in this post!

I know that Clotheshorse literally has "clothes" in the title, but the fast fashion business model has been applied to every category of products, which means overproduction, overconsumption, and landfills full of barely used stuff. That's why shopping #SecondhandFirst is a very impactful choice! And in Secondhand September, we can't limit our conversation to JUST clothing, because everything we buy/consume has an impact.

A year or two before I started Clotheshorse, I was at a thrift store in Limerick, PA, walking through the aisles of home goods...and I had a revelation: why would we ever buy any of these kinds of items brand new when there were nicer (and more affordable options) in just about every thrift store. And even though I had already been thrifting most things anyway, I made this "household policy" that we would only buy things brand new for the house if we exhausted every channel for finding it secondhand and/or it was an emergency situation.

So yeah, sometimes we buying something brand new (like a compost bin) but just about everything else comes our way secondhand (food processor, appliances, cookware, an ice crusher, linens, even a vintage carpet sweeper). And often if I wait long enough, I find it. Last summer--after years of searching--I finally found an instant pot at a yard sale! I don't think it was used even one time by its previous owner.

I'm such a big fan of shopping secondhand for the things I need that I challenged myself last year to only use secondhand items for the Clotheshorse Jamboree: craft supplies, paper goods, dishes, even a secondhand popcorn machine. I wanted to show that something like this was possible--even on a larger scale.

I can’t believe I’m writing this in 2025: the Threads algo showed me a post written by a mom saying that she refuses to dress her kids in secondhand clothes because it is gross.

But I guess it’s a good reminder of the slow fashion bubble we live in…while shopping secondhand first feels second nature to many of us, there are still a lot of people out there who think that secondhand clothes are gross, ugly, and only for the most desperate, unstylish people. 

It is imperative that we get as much wear as possible out of the clothing that already exists.

Experts believe our planet’s future depends on all of us buying 75% less brand new clothing. That means opting for secondhand as often as possible.  And that means getting most people to buy shop secondhand more often.

Part of Secondhand September is examining how we fit into the circular economy...and how that intersects with the fact that we cannot shop our way to a better world. Everything we do as part of the slow fashion way of life extends to secondhand shopping.  And sometimesI worry that shopping secondhand subconsciously encourages us to buy more stuff because we think it is a good deed that has no negative environmental impact.

We tend to think that overconsuming secondhand is the combination of a good dead and zero environmental impact rolled into one! It has the similar effect of greenwashing campaigns: it lets us think we don't have to make any difficult changes within ourselves while still saving the planet or doing something "good."

In fact, I don't just "worry" about this, I KNOW it is happening because I see statements in the comments section like "whenever I need retail therapy, I just buy something from Poshmark."

Many of us are transitioning our habit of overshopping away from fast fashion and into secondhand, without really doing the work to cut back on our consumption in the first place. And yeah, considering this stuff is hard work…at least in the beginning when we are trying to change our behaviors and habits. But it's work that we can't skip, because overshopping still has an impact. Sure, the overconsumption of secondhand clothing has a different impact from the overconsumption of fast fashion, but the impact adds up when many people are doing it on a large scale.