The first Vinted notification came in at 7:14 on a Sunday morning, eleven minutes after I'd pressed upload on Isla's old yellow raincoat for £7. Whoever bought it was up earlier than we were. That was the start of a fortnight of small parcels, all because of one Saturday morning in the middle of January when I emptied two wardrobes onto the landing carpet.
The rule was simple. If it hasn't been worn since September and doesn't fit now, it goes into one of three piles: kept, handed on or sold. Isla's wardrobe first, then Alfie's, one at a time, so I could see where each pile ended. Mabel supervised from the middle of the "kept" pile and shed on everything.
I picked January for two reasons. The wardrobes are overfull after Christmas, with new presents landing on top of everything from last spring, and I've noticed that people on Vinted seem to go looking for kids' clothes in the first weeks of the year, when they've decided to get on top of things. I counted 52 items in Isla's wardrobe. When I asked her, she could name about fourteen that she actually wears.
Kept
This was the smallest pile, which surprised me. Whatever fits now, and whatever Isla could plausibly grow into by the summer, stays. Alfie's dinosaur jumper stays too, although it's a size too small and the cuffs stop halfway up his arms, because when I held it up he said, "That's my T-rex one," in the voice of a boy being asked to give away a pet. One box stays in the loft: the outfits both of them came home from hospital in, their first shoes, and a very small Leeds United shirt that Rob insisted on.
Handed on
Priya's daughter Anaya is two years younger than Isla, so she gets the first pick of everything Isla has outgrown. That was a bag of size 7 to 8: nine tops, four pairs of leggings, a denim pinafore, two dresses and a cardigan that has been mended twice and is better for it. Priya took it on the school-gate pavement on Monday, said "you're a star", and handed me a jar of her chutney, which I think is a fair swap.
The bigger job was the loft. In early February the two big storage boxes of Isla's baby clothes, 0 to 3 months right up to 18 months, finally went to my sister Hayley. She came on Sunday 2 February with Ivy, who was nineteen days old and slept through the whole handover in her car seat. Rob carried the boxes down the loft ladder, and I took a sleepsuit with ducks on it out of the top box and put it back again twice. Hayley looked at me and didn't say anything, which is why she's my sister.
Sold
Seven items sold in the fortnight, for £31.20. I pay nothing as a seller, because the buyer pays the protection fee, so the whole amount is mine:
- Isla's yellow raincoat: £7.00
- A corduroy pinafore, never worn: £5.20
- Alfie's grey hoodie: £4.50
- Isla's party dress: £4.00
- Two pairs of Alfie's pyjamas, as a bundle: £4.00
- Alfie's dungarees: £3.50
- A pair of Isla's wellies: £3.00
The pinafore is the lesson in that list. I bought it in the Next sale in the autumn for £14 because it was lovely, Isla tried it on twice and said it itched, and it hung in her wardrobe with the tags on for three months. I got £5.20 for it. That's an £8.80 lesson in asking before I buy, which I will not learn from.
The listing took longer than the sorting. I photographed everything on the landing carpet in the morning light from the bathroom window, wrote the descriptions on the sofa that evening, listed things a few at a time over the next week, and answered one buyer who wanted "more photos" of a pair of wellies. They were wellies. I sent a photo of the other welly.
Next January I'd do it a month earlier, before the Christmas clothes arrive and the wardrobes fill up again, and I'd list on a Thursday evening, because that's when the messages seemed to come. For now, the wardrobes have a little space in them, and Mabel has found the empty box.
