Closet clear-out: Where do clothes go when you declutter?

Closet clear-out: Where do clothes go when you declutter?

For many, the closet clear-out is a January rite of passage, but social media trends geared towards minimalism and ‘underconsumption’ are spurring even more to declutter.

The problem is: what do you do with the clothes you don’t want anymore?

There’s no good place for them to go. While the ecosystem for reusing high-value and luxury items is solid, fashion still doesn’t have the right infrastructure to deal with lower value textile waste, says Francois Souchet, managing director of advisory firm Swanstant and former lead of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative. Meanwhile, textile collection, sorting and recycling is heavily flawed and stalled by a lack of support. In reality, the trend towards decluttering — and the cottage industry cropping up to encourage it — only highlights the gaps in fashion’s circular ecosystem. However, well-intentioned, closet clear-outs result in more used clothing filling resale sites, thrift stores, donation centres, garment markets in the Global South and landfills.

“There is no one-stop-shop solution right now, so the process requires a lot of personal research,” Souchet notes. “How do we make sure that decluttering doesn’t lead to more problems?”

Closet clear-outs characterised by angst

In late 2023, The Or Foundation launched its Speak Volumes campaign, calling on fashion brands to disclose their production volumes, a necessary step towards understanding the full scale of overproduction. On the flip side is overconsumption, which is why the non-profit recently invited consumers to take part in the campaign, too, by counting the number of items in their wardrobes. For many, this will be the first step towards decluttering, but that isn’t the main aim of the challenge. “It’s a cheeky way of saying to brands: ‘If I can do this, why can’t you?’” explains fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna, who says she found the challenge both confronting and constructive. “Seeing the piles and piles of clothing on my floor was quite overwhelming; 179 garments is a lot for one person to own. It’s held me very accountable — I don’t want to go over that number now.”

British Vogue senior sustainability and features editor Emily Chan also took to the challenge, and counted a total of 167 garments (not including underwear, nightwear, swimwear, sportswear or accessories). “If I manage to find new homes for all the pieces I’ve planned to shed, the figure will be closer to 90,” she writes, noting that the lack of satisfactory avenues for textile waste leave many declutterers in limbo. “I put off doing a closet clear-out for years because I was worried about my cast-offs ending up in landfill. In the end, I gave a lot of my pieces to local friends via Whatsapp, as it was less time-consuming than listing everything online. I’m still selling a few of my more valuable pieces online and will donate a selection to the charity Give Your Best, while the rest will go to Thrift Plus [a service that resells unwanted clothes on behalf of its users].”

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