IF YOU’RE an impulsive shopper, you’ve probably got an item sitting in your wardrobe that has yet to be worn.

Perhaps, you’re saving your ”brand-new” old clothes for when you finally lose weight and can fit into them, or maybe someone gave you an outfit as a gift that is so not you.

Maybe you bought something you didn’t quite like that much because you had a shopping voucher you had to use before the expiry date, which you didn’t want to go to waste.

Well, many of these good clothes end up at the back of your closet, and very often, you forget that they’re there until the next time you spring clean your house or when you’re moving into a new place.

Each year you wait to do something about those clothes, but eventually, like most unwanted goods, these clothes will end up in a landfill.

The fact is that many of these clothes will take years to decompose (leather shoes take 25 to 40 years, while nylon fabric takes 30 to 40 years, for example). So, just imagine how much energy and money you’ve wasted on buying those clothes.

Most clothes are recyclable (almost all textiles can be respun into new fabric or recycled and used as cleaning cloths or for filling materials in the construction industry) but let this be a last resort with almost-new clothes. Before you decide to throw anything away, or downgrade them to household chore rags, have a clothing swap session with your friends!

Two weeks ago four friends and I got together to exchange clothes, accessories, shoes and even bags. Two of them are currently on a shopping diet challenge, and saw this as a way of obtaining new clothes without spending a sen.

We arrived with bags of ”new” old items, decorated the sofa with accessories, piled the dining table with blouses and tops and laid dresses and long pants out on another sofa.

Some of the goodies we brought to the table

The afternoon was spent discussing the history behind each garment, why we don’t wear them anymore or have never worn them, and voting on who looked best in what.

After more than three hours of trying on clothes, modelling them to one another and giving suggestions on how to mix and match items with other pieces of clothing, we each went home with a whole lot of new items.

”It feels like I went shopping and bought a lot of new stuff, but the best part is that there wasn’t a sen spent,” said Alexandra Prabaharan.

”It was so much fun trying on all the clothes and modelling them and just having a nice girly afternoon,” she added.

We went home with new additions to our wardrobes that afternoon, knowing that we had saved a lot of money on shopping, reduced air pollution and energy by car-pooling to our friend’s place, and reducing landfill space by re-using one another’s old clothes.

Organise your own clothing swap

1. Get four to eight friends to go through their wardrobes and pack up anything they can find that are still in great condition, be it clothes, accessories or shoes.

2. Gather everyone in a spacious home, and lay the goods out.

3. Make sure that you have a variety of sizes available so everyone can take part, and no one feels left out.

4. Have a changing room ready, complete with a full-length mirror, and space where your friends can model the clothes.

5. Lay down some ground rules, for example: Once an item has been tried on and chosen, it’s off limits to anyone else. Draw numbers to decide who picks first, and maybe have different turns for different categories (shoes, dresses and so on).

6. Get everyone to bring snacks and drinks to add to the fun.

7. Take pictures!

8. At the end of the swap, whatever has not been claimed can be washed, packed up and delivered to a shelter. After all, the clothes are still in great condition, why let them go to waste, right?