My One Consignment Purchase

Last fall at my first sale I bought a bunch of winter clothing for the kids. They needed it and in the need I just broke even with what I sold. The spring I found a few more sales in my area and proceeded to try to get rid of as much of the summer stuff I had from when Aiden was a baby and the previous summer  season of Rebecca's. It was a lot of clothing. I did manage to sell about 70% of the stuff. About 10% was not what I deemed sell-able, but from what I have seen of the racks it would be perfectly fine to some people. So not too bad. This Fall sale season I was tempted to go just to see what was there as far as toys went because the kids were all set in the clothing department, but I resisted the urge. I volunteer one shift at the sale that is most local to me and was my first sale because I like to. I get to talk with the different moms and its nice. Plus I earn a little extra percentage. I get a chance at a drawing to earn 100% of my sales and also because as a seller I can also buy anything that is unsold during the regular sale. During the sorting of the items that were being donated, I happen to come across this beauty.

 

 Its Techno Gears Marble Mania. Aiden has had some interest in marble runs because they have one in one of his old classrooms. I did have it down on his birthday list, but never got around to getting it for him.  So when I happen to see this I snagged it up and for a lovely price of $8.00. And the box looks brand new to boot. You never know what you are going to find at one of these sales.

The Consignment Haul...

....haul it all away!!!!

This is my second fall season for consignment sales. Last year I only did one sale because I didn't know about all the other sales in the area. I was pretty disappointed in how little I sold last year, but what I did sell covered what I bought for the kids for last year. So that wasn't too bad. This year going through my inventory since I chose to take all unsold items back and going through what the kids wore last year; it was a bit overwhelming at first once I started to pull the bins off the table in the basement. It was somewhat reassuring to know that half of the stuff was already ironed and hung up from last fall. But since I am doing 3 other sales as well I needed to upload all the inventory into each of the databases. Once that was all done I slowly started the ironing and hanging part. This is the most time consuming of the whole task, but once this part is done the only thing that I need to do for each subsequent sale is re-tag.

And this is this year's sale inventory. I had to go out and buy a shower curtain rod because I didn't have enough hanging space for everything. When it was all said and done, 276 hangers worth of clothing.( This also includes shoes that were able to be sold)

 Back of the clothes horse

 Front of the clothes horse

 The shower curtain rod and on the far right there is a towel rack that has a few things on it as well.

Why yes I hanging clothes on our home gym!

It is quite a lot of clothes, but this also included all of Aiden's baby clothes that I held on to. I did give a bunch of things to Seth's sister as she just had baby boy a week ago and there were a number of things that went into the donate pile since I didn't deem them suitable to be sold. This past spring I sold about 75% of the items that I had so I am hoping that will be the case again. The kids are all set as far as winter clothing goes, but there might be a few things that I will look for like toys. The relief is that after this winter there will never be this amount of clothing to go through. From here on out it will just be one season to deal with and the linger leftovers from the previous years sale. Thank god!!!

Consigning we will go

I found this consignment sale, The Children's Closet, while searching online because the first one I found was too far away, in my opinion for drop off and what not, over an hour drive. Plus they limited the number of baby clothing you could consign to only 15 items in the 0-12 mos size range. I have waaaaay more then that I need to get rid of. With Children's Closet you can put up as much as you want for sale, no limits. Great! My kind of sale.
So for the past 4 weeks I have been sorting through bins and bins of clothing to weed out what had stains on it and what I deemed not appropriate to resell. I then had to put in a description of the item and price it, print out the tag, iron, hang and tag the item. My clothes horse never had to work so hard in its life with all that clothing hanging on it. 

Thursday night was the drop off all all my stuff, 5 storage bins, a stroller and a bumbo seat. I felt like I was in heaven with all the stuff already hanging on the racks and I knew that more was to come. Now I will say that this sale is not nearly as the Divine Consign sale that is down in Dallas and I will say that I am extremely jealous of all you girls down there that get to go and participate in that sale, but this is pretty decent.  I was able to find a couple of things for Aiden for next winter. Old kids items are hard since they take more of a beating. And I was also able to find matching pants for some tops that I have for Rebecca in 9-12 mos and pretty much everything I need for 12-18 mos winter stuff. Two pairs of 12-18 PJs that I picked up I found out had pretty decent stains on the pants that I didnt see since it was under the top so I was pretty annoyed at that. its a learning experience. This is my first consignment sale and from this I have learned that you need to be really careful when looking over items for the quality of it, but I will add in that I was really surprised at some of the items that were allowed to be put up for sale. Some were really stained in my opinion and some had some really bad wear and even some tears on it. On the web site it did state that all items should presentable as if you were buying it from a retail clothing store. I guess there really is a buyer for everything though you do have the option to donate any items that are not sold. I'd rather not bring it back but at the same time I know that if it doesn't get sold this time I can probably sell it at next years winter sale. I paid good money for all my children's clothing and so I'd like to get something for it so I can put it towards items that they need like the items that I picked up below.

 Aiden's loot (wish there was more)

This is half of what I picked up for Rebecca. Some Old Navy, Children's Place, Gymboree and Gap items. She still needs PJ's and maybe 2-3 more 12-18 mos outfits, but I was able to get a lot for her. I just hope that a lot of my items get sold.