This started as a small question. I was looking for a stat, something ordinary. What do most parents do with kids' clothes once they are outgrown? How many of them get sold instead of thrown out? How much of what we donate actually gets worn again? I assumed it would take ten minutes to find.
It is not that the answer is complicated. It is that nobody has looked.
What I know happens
The first part of the journey is well documented. A donated item gets a small window of time to sell on the shop floor, usually about four weeks, before getting pulled. When's the last time you shopped for kids' clothes at the thrift store? Honestly?
What happens next is the part most of us haven't really considered. Turns out it gets compressed into bales and sold by the pound.
I was shocked by the lack of research out there.
Why nobody can tell you where yours went
The EPA measures what Americans throw away and what gets recycled. It does not count what goes to charity for reuse at all. In 2024 the GAO told Congress that the national data on used clothing is too limited to work with.
So the two organizations best placed to answer this are not answering it. Not because anyone is hiding anything, but because nobody along that chain is required to report it, and once clothing is measured in bales instead of items, there is nothing left to count.
So why is nobody paying attention?
Three reasons, as far as I can tell.
- Kids' clothes are small and cheap. A cardigan does not register the way a car or a fridge does, even though a child goes through a hundred of them.
- The statistics that do exist measure spending. The government tracks what families spend on children's clothing. It does not track what happens to any of it afterwards.
- The people with the strongest reason to count are selling something. Most of the numbers you can find come from resale companies publishing their own research. Including, fairly, me.
What I can answer
This is the part I can do something about. Every bag that comes through KidSwaps gets opened and graded item by item, and every item is recorded. What it was, what condition it arrived in, and which family it went to next. Nothing leaves here as weight.
There is not much of it yet. When there is enough to be worth reading, I will publish it here, whatever it says.
Know a source I've missed? Tell me and I'll add it.
