One Simple Way You Can Bless Others by Cleaning Out Your Closet

Our closets can overflow before we realize how it happened! What if you could clean out your closet and bless others at the same time? Here is a simple idea you can adopt!

Have you ever thought about having a FREE Ladies' Boutique? Actually organizing one? I did a few years ago. It was the biggest blessing to me and so many other women in our church. Many women who have too many clothes and others who don't have much at all come together and bless each other! I challenged the ladies of my church and they came out blessing each other unbelievably.

Here are some suggestions for organizing your own FREE ladies' boutique:

1. Determine what group of people you want to invite. I decided to stick with women from the church only, for many reasons. But, this was a ministry for them and I didn't want strangers showing up in my home that were just looking for free clothing. I wanted this to be about blessing each other.

2. Ask that everyone donate something, even if it's just one or two small things - or loads of stuff. Suggest that they go through purses, belts, scarves, skirts, pants, shirts, blouses, dresses, camisoles, and shoes.

3. Ask for supplies! I needed hanging racks - so I asked and asked. I got enough for all the clothes - and there were a lot of clothes. I needed hangers, and got them all donated. Any small thing I needed was donated to help out - even props for the jewelry in the vintage suitcases and some full length mirrors were all borrowed for the weekend.

4. Ask for help! You can't do this alone. Use the skills of other women. I had a crew of 8-10 ladies show up and I assigned an area for each lady and let them organize it however they wanted, with a few small suggestions from me.

5. Be specific about date and time. Set a date and stick to it. You will have women who can't come, but you won't find a perfect date. I gave a "make up" day the day after, as well as an opportunity for women outside of church to come and get the last of the clothing. And I scheduled for a pick up the Tuesday after the boutique, for the charity truck to pick the leftovers up.

6. Find a place to put all the clothes. I had ladies drop off in my van {during church} or at my house during the week. I put most of them in my garage or basement. I recommend only having them do that no more than two weeks before your event because you'll wind up with a mess in your there for a long time and that's no fun.

7. Have plenty of {full length} mirrors and "dressing rooms" - everyone needs to see how they look after trying on clothes. I used our bedrooms and bathrooms as "dressing rooms". I put notes in the dressing rooms that if they didn't like the clothes to hang them up and put them back exactly where they found them.

8. It was overwhelming pulling out all the clothes and jewelry and purses, so just take a deep breath and go through one bag at a time with each of your volunteer crew - by the way, I didn't open ANYTHING until the day before the boutique. Come up with creative ways to put the clothes out. We hung all the skirts, blouses, dresses, jackets, and trousers. We folded all the casual pants/shorts, shirts, capris, and anything else casual on several large tables. All the sweaters were folded and set on my large fireplace mantel. The scarves and jewelry we displayed creatively - we borrowed some vintage suitcases and I had one lady drape jewelry beautifully.

9. Sort clothing by type and size. We had my living room to put all the hanging clothes, my kitchen {with several large folding tables} to put all casual clothing, my music room for all the shoes, and areas in between for jewelry and other accessories. Then, we grouped by size to make it easier for ladies to find the clothing.

10. Label everything. I had one volunteer who made pretty little signs all over with all the types of clothing and sizes.

Have fun! Get excited about your boutique!  You can go HERE and see more details of my boutique that I did. Would you ever consider putting on a free boutique?

Happy Organizing!

Becky