Here’s my clothing swap checklist to get started:

• Host Home
• Date/Time
• Invitation
• Food/Drink
• Donation/Action Plan for Leftovers

First, you need to find a hostess who will open her home to people bringing in LOTS of clothing. Generally, the hostess is responsible for helping transport the remaining clothes to their donation destination post-swap, but we try to pitch in if we can. 

Second, pick a date/time that most of your friends can attend. The swap works better if you’ve got a good group contributing to the swap piles. If you’ve only got 3 people interested, give it a shot and see how it goes! Our motto is the more the merrier! 

Next, designate someone to put together an invitation with details of what the swap entails. We usually rely on an electronic version of an invitation using Paperless Post, and we send it out anywhere from 2 weeks - a month in advance to give people time to gather their swap stash. Here’s some sample wording from our clothing swap queen bee, Meridith, to give you an example of what we say:

The next step is to designate who will bring food/drink. It’s important to us to keep ours so simple, since these are usually weeknight events and most of us have small children. Usually, we divvy up these duties between 2-3 people, and we end up with some savory and some sweet eats along with wine and sparkly water. Keep. It. Simple. 

Finally, to round out our checklist, we would highly recommend having an action plan in place with the leftover clothes before you host the party. Even though we’ve been doing this for several years now, we’re always blown away by the sheer volume of clothes contributed and then left over. We’ve done a variety of different donation drop-offs in the past, but we try to make sure we're intentionally donating these clothes where they're needed. Some local (San Antonio, TX) options for us include: Restoration Closet, Revolution Thrift and some of our local school district's clothing closets. Another idea would be to take items to a local buy/sell/trade store and donate the money earned to a local non-profit. 

WHAT TYPE OF CLOTHING IS ELIGIBLE?

As I mentioned before, it’s also a good way to try out different styles you may not have wanted to spend money on in the store.