Where Do I Swap My Style? Give + Take!

Remember the 2014 Shop Drop Challenge? That was when I encouraged Mommy Greenest readers to give up shopping for 30 days. The logic went like this: 160 million American women spend about $60 a month on clothes and dump an average of six pounds of textiles into the landfill; if we all stopped buying new clothes for one month we could save nearly one billion pounds of textile waste and $10 billion. So we didn’t quite reach six figures, but this January, 500 women saved more than $30,000 and 3,000 pounds of landfill waste, just by taking a 30-day retail shopping pause—and thrifting and swapping instead. We celebrated the culmination of that event with an event at the Give + Take Swap Boutique in Santa Monica, CA. And now I’m taking the party one step further.

By keeping clothes in circulation, we recycle and reduce landfill waste. Ask for the Mommy Greenest discount at Give + Take Swap Boutique in Santa Monica, CA. Because swap is the new shop. I’ve always known that a clothes swap with friends is a fantastic way to clean our your closet and get some new duds in exchange. But without a little organization it can get a little confusing. And there’s also the awkwardness of negotiating the value of the clothes you bring in, as well as what you want to exchange them for—especially when your friends might have different ideas!

Then a stylist friend of mine told me about this amazing swap boutique—the only one of its kind in the world, as far as I could tell. I was intrigued, to say the least. I had dropped clothes off at a thrift store before, getting pennies on the dollar. But I had never heard of a place where you could bring the clothes you no longer wanted in your closet, get their full value in credit, and exchange them for gently loved goodies.

To me, it seemed like the perfect way to shop: By keeping clothes in circulation, we were recycling and reducing landfill waste.

The first time I went in with two bags of stuff that had just been sitting there gathering dust and exchanged them for clothes that I couldn’t wait to wear out. I was hooked! For the past five years, Give + Take Swap Boutique has been one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. I bring out-of-town friends there when they visit, and proudly tell anyone who asked where I got my purse/bag/dress that it came from “the swap.”

So when the current owner, Celina Amaya, said she was looking for someone to partner with her to take it to the next level, my hand shot up faster than a fifth grader at a spelling bee. Celina and I truly believe that swapping can transform the way you look at shopping—most of our members no longer shop retail, choosing instead to “swap their style,” as we like to call it, in a more eco-friendly and cost-saving way. In the future, we hope to open—or even franchise—more swap boutiques, so that this amazing community building resource can be accessed by more women, and even men.

If you’re in Los Angeles, come visit me at Give + Take Swap Boutique, CA and ask for the Mommy Greenest discount, which gives new members four months at just $22.50 per month! And if you’re not, here’s a how-to post on how to set up a swap with your friends.

Because swap is the new shop. Right?