The rest of the time, it goes like this: find good lighting, take pics, write a description, guess at a price, list it, answer "is this still available" from someone who then goes quiet, relist the stuff that didn't sell, get an offer of $5 for a coat, then print the label and get to the post office.
None of those takes that long on its own, they just sit in your head, as more on the to do list. I've sold on Poshmark, and the part I didn't expect wasn't the time, it's the hassle.
That's the cost we don't price, and you don't recognize it till you've done it.
Where to sell kids' clothes
Here are the options today.
- Consignment chains like Once Upon A Child. You haul the bin in, they'll keep a few items that will resell fast for cheap, then you haul the rest back home.
- Send-in services like thredUP. They mail you a bag, do all the work, then pay you a share of whatever sells. No effort, long wait, and they decide what's worth listing at all.
- Facebook Marketplace and local groups. Free to list and no shipping, but every sale is a conversation and meeting a stranger in a parking lot isn't always fun.
- Poshmark or Mercari. The most money per item, but also the most work for you.
What actually lands in your pocket
Say you go with Poshmark. Here's the part nobody does the math on.
When you're selling a quality piece, the fees can make sense, but not all kids' clothes sit at that price. A sweater she wore a handful of times lists for around $10. Poshmark takes 20% on anything $15 and up, but under $15 it takes a flat $2.95 instead, so you're handing over closer to 30%¹,². Now the value of this work is getting pretty muddy.
Then there's shipping, which the buyer pays and which runs $6.49.³ She isn't deciding whether to spend $10 on your sweater. She's deciding whether to spend $16.49 on something she can't send back if it doesn't fit.⁴
So a fee structure that's mildly annoying on a coat is punishing on the exact things kids outgrow fastest.
So is it worth it?
For a few good pieces, yes. Photograph them properly, list them individually, and you'll do fine.
For the rest of the pile, the evening is the thing you're actually spending, and it doesn't get paid back. That's not an argument for throwing them away. It's an argument for picking the route that costs you the least of yourself, and being honest that the money was never going to be much.
The route I ended up building is swapping, where you send a bag of outgrown clothes and get credits for the next size instead of cash. You can see how that works at KidSwaps. It's not for everyone, and it's not selling. You get clothes back, never money.
