Clothing Swap the second

We had a great turn out for today’s clothing swap at Woodenapples! It was even easier to organize than last time. Marilis and I were working together at our part time job last week and Marilis turned to me and said, “Let’s have the second clothing swap next Saturday.” Sure! Ok…

We emailed Amy at Woodenapples, where we held our last swap, and worked out the details. We wanted to have flyers ready to give out at the Monthly Mess, which was the next day. So I asked Conor, my roommate, bandmate, and all around mate to draw up a flyer and forward it to Marilis, who got it printed at school. Risa and Elran put the flyer up on the Indyish event page with a link from the front page. Marilis and I made a facebook event and invited lots of peeps. I think facebook and word of mouth are really our best promoters in this case. Flyers are good for handing to someone so they’ll be reminded and maybe talk about it with friends. But clothing swaps go way back historically, so you can basically just say, “We’re having a swap at this place at this time” and (mainly) ladies will show up with their holsters and crew.

It’s a serious blizzard day in Montreal, but people came out with their garbage bags (and American Apparel bags) stuffed with clothes to dump. We had a donation bowl so people could give a few bucks as they went into the swapping room. I think this worked better than last time, when it was free to get in and $5 if you didn’t bring clothes. Today more people brought stuff to give away and most everyone donated.

By the end of the day, everyone left with a good sized bag or two of clothes. There were 10 garbage bags full of leftover clothes (and underwear, and books, and tissues, and a light fixture? come on people) and $100 in donations! We gave half the donation money to Woodenapples for letting us use the space and just because we really like Amy and wanna support her store and the artists she supports. On Monday, we’re bringing the other half of the donations and the 10 bags of clothes to the Mile End Mission.

My head hurts with sick and we lose an hour tonight, so I’m off to bed early with a book about Newfoundland.

Thanks to everyone who came out and gave something! Watch the blog for the next swap, maybe pre-summer?