Remember last week’s tackle when I cleaned out the master closet? I had some extra motivation to tackle our closets (the kids’ closets and dressers were next, although not nearly as dramatic!) – I was preparing for our church’s first clothing and toy swap!

I have been thinking about an event like this for quite a few years, actually. We get lots of hand-me-down kids’ clothing, which has been such a blessing to us – I’m not sure what in the world they would be wearing without these much appreciated boxes of blessings! Our ABF is pretty good about sharing clothes with one another, but I thought it would be great if we could open it up to a church-wide swap. Especially during difficult economic times, knowing that many are on reduced incomes or have lost their jobs entirely, this is a very practical way for the church body to care for one another.

We asked that anyone interested in participating drop off any gently used clothing (washed and sorted by size) and toys that they were ready to part with at the church on Friday evening. We set tables up and labeled them according to gender and size and set all the clothing out on them, and also had toy, book, and baby item areas. On Saturday morning the room was open for everyone to come “shop” for free!

I came home with some clothing and some little tikes gems: a see saw (which is shaped like a fish and hence has been named “Moby”), a xylophone, and a dishwasher/sink for AG’s kitchen!

We didn’t have as many people participate as I had hoped – next time we do this I hope more will join in. That is not to say that we were lacking donations – wow, did we have a lot of stuff! However, the ratio of what was brought to what was taken was way out of proportion – we had so much left over!

It did not go to waste – the children’s clothing was boxed up and taken to family services for foster kids, the adult clothing and baby items were put into the closet for a ministry our church has to families in need, and the many, MANY toys that were left were trucked over to Salvation Army.

Lessons learned:
1. We need more than two women to man this event! We were expecting to have more of our women’s ministry committee there, but almost everyone ended up being out of town or unavailable for other reasons. This was a lot of work – if you do this at your church be sure to have adequate people on hand, especially for clean up. We really underestimated how much there would be leftover that needed to be dealt with before we could even consider cleaning up the room and setting up for children’s church the next day! By God’s grace we somehow accomplished this with 2 people in about 2.5 hours… and I thought I would sleep for the next two days!

2. Advertise, advertise, advertise. Even though the response from the church was much less than I had hoped, it was worth it because we had at least one mom come who does not attend church anywhere and said she is considering coming to the church, now! Next time I would love to open this up more deliberately to the community. What a great opportunity to show God’s love! The little boy of the woman I mentioned actually came up to me on Friday night and said, “Why are you doing this?” What an excellent question! :)

Have you ever attempted (or attended) a swap like this? Please share your gems of wisdom! :)