Clothes Swap

We found this to be a fun activity we added to our fall lock-in. Also ends up a service project.

Inform parents at last a month in advance to start going through her clothes and gather those she has outgrown, especially GS shirts, white tops, tan bottoms, even shoes. Ask that they bag them up by size with the size written on the outside of the bag.

Before the event- make signs with the sizes you expect to show up and take a couple of blank one for unexpected sizes. Also you will need to take tape to tape them up.

The day of the event--tape the sizes up in order on the wall above where they will be placed. Then have a co-leader posted near the area where you will lay them out. When parents/girls come in with bags, she will take them and put with others of that size.

When the time comes for the swap you will have to think about what will work best for your size group. Send them in a few at the time is best. What we did was have girls who brought clothes go first.

We have a large group with about 32 girls there that night so I sent them in by age level because they generally 'shopped' in the same area and there were only about 6 to send at once. After all girls who brought clothes 'shopped', I sent in all other girls, they chose as many things as they wanted. We gave them a bag as they exited the area holding clothes and helped them put them in the bag. One more call for "has everyone shopped?"

Then we took all clothes and made a big pile. Then had the girls gather behind the pile for a pic to send to council. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was discussed.

We then bagged all leftover clothes (there were a few that were grabbed from the pile "I didn't see this" as we bagged.) The leftovers were placed by the door ready to go.

We continued with our lock-in activities and the next morning a co-leader dropped off the leftovers to a charity.