The best way to get cute clothes for free: How to do a clothing swap

Amping up your wardrobe can be really expensive. Especially when you’re in college and don’t have a lot of extra money to spend. But what if I told you there’s a way to get a bunch of new clothes for free?

The way to do this is a clothing swap. It’s an awesome way to swap your own gently used clothes that you don’t wear for clothes that you will wear!

What is a clothing swap?

Basically the idea behind a clothing swap is you get a group of people together and, well, swap clothes. Each person brings a certain number of items, and you go though rounds of swapping them. At the end everyone goes home with a handful of new clothes!

Why should I do a clothing swap?

You get clothes for free

The number one reason I like to do this is because I always end up with a bunch of cute clothes for free! It’s one of my favorite ways to get new clothes for my wardrobe.

It’s eco friendly!

Something that a lot of people, college students especially, have to turn to when they can’t afford cute new clothes is fast fashion.

Fast fashion is terrible for the environment (not even including the ethical issues that come along with it), so swapping clothes is a great way to keep your clothes out of landfills, avoid supporting the creation of tons of new clothes, and still get clothes for cheap!

Related: How to be more eco friendly in your 20s

Fun with friends

Doing a clothing swap is a super fun thing to do with friends. Along with this, each friend will probably have a different style of clothes that they bring, so this is a great way to branch out and try different styles of clothing!

It brings a little bit of healthy competition, and it’s so fun to see your friends making good use of things from your wardrobe that you never wore!

How to do a clothing swap

My friends and I play our clothing swaps like Dirty Santa. I’m not sure if this is how other people do theirs, but it’s fun this way and works for us. Here are the steps and rules we use.

Pre-Swap

Set a maximum number of items

The first time my friends and I did a clothing swap, we made the mistake of having everyone bring 10 items. Not only was it hard for everyone to gather 10 items from their closet that they no longer wanted, it took us 4 hours to get through all of it!

For this reason, I’d recommend setting a max of 4 or 5 items for everyone to bring. How many items you want will depend on the number of people coming. The bigger the group, the less items! Last night my friends and I did a swap with 5 people and we each brought 4 items and were done in about an hour.

Pick a theme

You don’t want a swap where everyone just brings random articles of clothing. For example, you don’t really want someone bringing only winter items in the middle of summer. So, it’s important to set a theme to make sure everyone is on the same page.

A good way to do this is to just go with whatever season you’re in. If you’re doing a clothing swap in the fall, bring warm clothes. If you’re doing a clothing swap in the summer, bring summer clothes.

Really with themes, the world is your oyster. Do whatever you think would be the best for your friend group!

Be mindful of sizing differences

When planning a clothing swap, it’s important to bring clothes that will fit whoever ends up with them. For my friend group, we usually try not to include pants or things in the haul that we know won’t fit everyone. So be mindful of who is coming when you’re picking what clothes to bring!

During the swap

Draw numbers

The first thing you’re all going to do to get the swap going is draw numbers to determine what order you go in when it comes to selecting clothes from the pile.

Everyone puts one item in the middle

Once you know what order you’re going in, the next thing you’re going to do is start the rounds. Each person selects an item from their pile of clothes that they brought to put in the middle each round.

Go in order and select items from the middle

Using the numbers you drew, go in order and each person selects an item from the middle on their turn. Once everyone has gone and has picked an item, you start a new round.

After the first round, steals come into play.

Rules

No steals first round

For the first round, no one is allowed to steal any items from another person. However, after the first round, on each person’s turn they will have an opportunity to either choose an item from the middle, or steal an item from someone else.

Steals = an “attack of opportunity” for person stolen from

Everyone needs to have the same number of items at all times. So, if someone gets an item stolen, they get a chance to replace it by either choosing another item from the middle or stealing from someone else.

Can’t immediately steal an item back

However, they CANNOT immediately steal back an item that was just stolen from them.

For example, in our swap last night, my sister stole an item from me. Since she stole from me, it was my turn to replace my item, but I couldn’t just steal back the item she stole from me right after.

So I replaced the item with something else, and it moved onto the next person’s turn. On their turn, they stole one of my items. Then it was my turn to replace my item again. So, I took that chance to steal the item back that my sister had stolen from me 2 turns ago.

So while you can’t immediately steal something back, you can steal back an item that was taken if you’re given the opportunity later.

After “attacks of opportunity” it goes back to normal turn order

When the person who is stolen from gets the chance to replace their item outside of their turn, it pauses the order that you’re supposed to be going in. So, for instance, in the example with my sister, I got an “attack of opportunity” outside of my turn when she stole the shirt from me before the person who was supposed to go after her.

When I was replacing my item, if I chose to replace it by stealing from another person, they would get an “attack of opportunity” and so on and so forth until eventually someone decides not to steal and picks an item from the middle instead. Then it would be whoever’s turn it was supposed to be after the person who stole in the first place.

Items are locked after 2 steals

You have the opportunity to steal an item twice before it’s locked. Once it’s locked no one is able to steal it anymore.

So going back to the previous example, my sister stole that shirt from me. That marked it as having one steal. Once I stole it back the second time, it was locked and no one else could take it.

That’s how my friends and I do our clothing swaps!

So, are you going to try a clothing swap with your friends? It is my favorite way to revamp my wardrobe with cute new clothes and try new styles. So far my friends and I have done it twice a year, and hopefully we continue to, because I love it. It is such a good way to get cute clothes for free.

The best way to get cute clothes for free: How to do a clothing swap

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