002. It all starts with stuff.
With a step-by-step guide for giving your items a new life
Like most others I know who have taken an intentional career break, I started this year with grand ambitions to better organize my house. I’ve admittedly never been a Martha Stewart-esque domestic goddess, but ever since having kids, the amount of clutter we have accumulated seems to have grown tenfold. It ranges from toys with 75 individual parts that don’t come with their own storage bag (every parent’s fave) to old Halloween costumes with all the coordinating plastic accessories (a must).
As I started to tackle the mountain of baby gear and clothing that my daughters have outgrown, I kept thinking about how all parents inevitably face the same challenge of purging their kids’ stuff - and yet how, as a society, we don’t have great systems to enable them to get rid of it responsibly. Sure, there are many people who save their stuff to pass on to a new niece/nephew or close friend. But in our situation, like that of many others, we don’t necessarily have a “village”, nor do we live within short driving distance of good friends who are pregnant. (Let’s face it, we are also getting old, so most of our friends and family are done having kids).
There’s also the option of dropping things off at Goodwill or local charities (and I occasionally do), but I so often hear that those types of organizations are overwhelmed with donations, and depending on the item, it might end up in the landfill anyway. What’s an Intentionalista to do?!
(PS: I know all my Pacific Northwest friends reading this are probably thinking, “ahem, you forgot about consignment!” You are ahead of the game, and I will get to that in the next post).
To me, baby and kids stuff is one of the clearest use cases for the circular economy and a great gateway into understanding its benefits. There’s a sheer magnitude of stuff, often used for a short amount of time, in mostly great (sometimes tags still on!) condition, and there is always a robust market of other parents who need and want it. Environmental concerns aside — from a cost perspective, it also just makes sense not to spend a small fortune on brand new things that will be used just for one season.
But to make that transition on a societal level, we need to create better systems (and spread awareness of existing systems) for keeping what’s already out there in circulation.
As I was thinking about how I’d approach some of the topics I knew I wanted to cover in this blog, I came across this great piece of inspiration from my “Something to Think About” calendar:
I am already naturally optimistic and responsible, but I wanted to challenge myself to take more initiative to solve the problem I was seeing all over my house. The bottom three phrases in the image above perfectly captured how I felt earlier this year (and also how I felt when I decided to start this blog)!
What can I do? How can I take initiative in my own community to make a difference?
In the circular economy course I took with Vojtech Vosecky in the spring, I remembered learning about the circular transition strategy he helped create for the City of Prague. He mentioned that the city held Swap Events, since one of the tenets of the circular economy is to keep existing resources in use as long as possible. If you’re not familiar with a Swap Event, it’s exactly like it sounds - it’s an event where people can exchange items they no longer need for items they want.
I thought holding a Swap at my kids’ school would be the perfect opportunity to take action.
I reached out to a good friend and former colleague from Amazon who had recently held a successful Work Wear Swap at her office in Singapore. She gave me some pointers and encouragement, and I decided to take the plunge!
The rest of this post is a behind-the-scenes look at what I did, along with some helpful considerations and lessons learned if you are thinking about doing a Swap Event yourself. Note, Swaps are not limited to kids and baby stuff - this can apply to so many other types of items! I’m basically giving you a “Swap in a Box” blueprint below, so you have all you need to just go for it.
How I Ran a Swap Event
Getting buy-in from participants
👩🏽🍼Parents: Once I had the idea for a Swap, I first gauged interest with other parents. I texted a few friends: “Would you be interested in participating in a Swap Event to exchange gently used clothes, toys, books and baby gear if we held one at the school?” I got positive affirmation from everyone I asked that something like this would be fun and much needed. That helped take a little bit of the initial fear out of the equation.
🏫 School leadership: Then I pitched the concept to the head of our school (with some parent buy-in already under my belt). She was very receptive to the idea as long as it was well executed and someone could volunteer to take the lead on logistics. We also discussed dates that would make sense for the school calendar and agreed that she would send out my emails via the school-wide email list. I came back to her a week later with a project plan (a simple spreadsheet with key dates and tasks) for her visibility and got her official sign off.
Planning and communication
📋Format: Our school (and I) had never done one of these before, so I wanted to keep the format simple: “bring what you want, take what you want”. Some organizations and schools run this type of event very successfully as a fundraiser and therefore put price tags on items, but especially for the first time around, I didn’t want to over-complicate it or put up any barriers to participation. Everything was totally free!
📅 Event location and time: Our school does not have an indoor event space, so we chose to do it outside in the parking lot. I would definitely recommend an indoor event if it’s possible at your location - I was definitely a little stressed in the lead up hoping for good weather. Thankfully we had sunshine, but it was super windy, so all the clothes kept blowing off the tables! We chose to do early September so we’d have warm temperatures, but if I could do it again, I’d do late September so parents have a little more breathing room (and time to clean out their closets!) after the hectic start of the school year.
👕 Types of items: You’ll want to make it very clear which types of items are acceptable to bring. We wanted to offer enough variety that people felt like there was something for them no matter their kids’ age, but we also didn’t want to deal with bulky items like car seats and cribs due to the lack of indoor storage space (not to mention those types of items can also be riskier for safety/recall reasons). We decided to limit acceptable items to clothes, books, diapers, formula, toys and small baby/kids gear, and I thought that worked out really well.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏽 Recruiting volunteers: Don’t attempt this on your own! We had only 6 volunteers and managed just fine, though 6-8 people is probably the sweet spot. Before I recruited volunteers, I had developed the project plan and had a solid understanding of where I needed help. Highly recommend this before you engage volunteers, so it’s just plug and play. The main buckets for volunteer help needed were 1) getting display materials (i.e., supplying the collection bins, tarps, tables, clothing racks, etc.), 2) sorting the items 3) setting up/tearing down on day of event, and 4) transporting leftover items to local charities.
We only held two virtual volunteer meetings (30 min each): one kickoff meeting to discuss overall event vision/logistics and assign people to tasks and one status meeting the week before the event to check in and troubleshoot wherever needed. We coordinated everything else via email and a shared Google Sheets spreadsheet to keep the time commitment reasonable for busy parents!
📣 Communication: I created a digital event flyer and had the head of school email it out along with a call for volunteers. We also posted physical flyers on the doors to every classroom. Our initial event announcement went out about seven weeks beforehand, and then we had about four follow-up emails and reminders leading up to the day. For an event like this that requires parents to prepare ahead of time (and especially a new type of event that we’d never held before), I felt that over-communicating and sending multiple reminders was definitely necessary and beneficial.
📦Leftover items: Lastly, you’ll need to plan what you’ll do with any leftover items at the end of the event. I asked Gemini to create a spreadsheet of local charities that accepted the types of items we were collecting, and this worked like a charm! We just had a volunteer call each place to confirm the information was accurate. I also recommend asking your volunteers if there are specific places near and dear to them that they’d like to support - one mom on our volunteer team worked at a nonprofit that provides interim housing, so a lot of our extras went there (and it wasn’t on Gemini’s list)!
Week-of and Day-of Event
🛍️ Item collection: Our event was the Friday after Labor Day, so the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before, we had bins set up in one of the storage rooms inside the school for item drop off. We asked parents to pre-sort their items into the bins (which were labeled by item type) to reduce the amount of sorting that needed to be done by volunteers.
Thankfully, the clothes were the only item that took any real effort to sort (I took them home and sorted them in my living room, but if your school or organization has the space, you can and should sort it all there). We also provided parents with masking tape, baggies, safety pins, Sharpies and Post-its next to the bins in case they needed to keep toy pieces or clothing pieces together or write a note to the future owner.
⛺Display materials: We didn’t buy a single new thing for this event! Volunteers (and in some cases the school itself!) provided the bins, folding tables, tents, tarps and clothing racks. One volunteer went to Kohl’s and was able to get a bunch of hangers donated as well! We did not worry about table coverings - we just cleaned the tables down first. One recommendation is just to make sure volunteers put their name on their display materials with masking tape, because a lot of tables and bins look alike!
📱QR code sign ups for Whatsapp group: During the event, we had a flyer on one of the tables with a QR code to join a private Whatsapp Buy/Sell/Give group. Think of it as a Facebook Marketplace just for the school! It’s a great way for parents to swap or sell their bulkier and higher value items that we didn’t accept during the event.
Post-event
🧐 Be transparent: Once the event is over, we sent out an event recap with photos and information on where the leftover items went, so people could feel their impact. We also re-shared the link to the Whatsapp group to encourage people to engage in swapping throughout the year.
🗳️ Send a survey: Lastly, we sent out a survey as part of the event recap to assess if there was interest in holding it again next year - we got a resounding “yes”! I also took the opportunity to get feedback on things like format and timing since it was our first rodeo.
Phew, well there you have it. I am happy to provide any further info to anyone interested (including my project plan template). I hope this was a helpful starting point and that you feel empowered to start Swapping.
Have you ever participated in a Swap before? Tell me about your experience! If you’ve never been to one, keep an eye out for one near you - I promise your closets, your wallet and the planet will thank you!