New School Year Brings Clothes-Buying Lesson

Most parents view the new school year with mixed emotions. While our children’s pursuit of knowledge is thrilling for us to see, it distresses us to spend a fortune to outfit their foray down the halls of academia.

And then our kids have the nerve to outgrow their new clothes by Thanksgiving.

These endless pilgrimages to the mall produce closets jammed with expensive but outdated clothing. Ultimately, the excess is given away or destroyed by mildew. Or, in the case of free-lance writer Barbara Weldon Tone, it gets mothballed, preserved for nostalgic reasons.

“Every year, I end up with at least two big green trash bags full of stuff my 8-year-old daughter has outgrown, hates or wore twice over the holidays,” Tone said. “If I can’t bear to part with it (a less and less frequent occurrence as she gets older), I wrap it carefully and put it in the attic with the others.”

The wasteful process always bothered Tone, but now she sees an alternative, and we’re not talking about Gov. Pete Wilson’s plan to put California schoolchildren in uniforms. A few months ago, Tone saw an ad in a local throwaway newspaper for a children’s consignment store near her Simi Valley home. She couldn’t believe that something like this existed.

“You can bring your stuff in and they will give you money when it sells!” she said. “It sounded way too simple and way too good to be true, so I decided to investigate.”

Tone’s investigation led her to 10 children’s consignment stores in Ventura County--and prompted her to write this week’s Centerpiece on how to sell your kids’ clothes on consignment and buy them clothes without going bankrupt.

Your kid may balk at wearing used clothes, but Tone points out that the consignment shops sell only the best used clothes.

“It was amazing,” she said. “For the most part, these are not thrift stores. The clothes are great quality, many name brands like Gap, Asorba, Jessica McClintock, Gymboree, Land’s End, London Fog, to name a few. They’re in excellent condition and unbelievably inexpensive.”

But Tone has a word of caution to first-time visitors to a children’s consignment shop.

“It’s rather like your first trip to the Price Club,” she said. “You may come home with more than you planned because the deals are irresistible.”

Tone herself came under their spell. “In two visits, I bought eight or nine things for my daughter, several she actually needed, the rest too good to resist.”

Tone was a little reluctant to share her newfound knowledge.

“I felt like I do when I find a great new restaurant,” she said. “I wanted to keep it secret so nobody else would go there.”