Like most parents, we have tons of used baby clothing and used toddler clothes that are in excellent condition. Since babies and toddlers grow so fast, unless the clothing gets stained, it almost always ends up in good condition since they outgrow them before they can wear them out.

Tax Deduction for Donating Baby Clothes

There are a lot of ways to get some money for used children’s clothing. The simplest is to donate clothing to a charitable organization. Any IRS 503(c)(b) non-profit organization will do. Unless you have your deduction limited for some reason, you can deduct the "value" of donated clothing from your income taxes.

If you are in the 30 percent tax bracket, for example, your taxes are basically reduced by $3 for every $10 of clothing you donate. (This is overly simplified, but it works to give an approximate idea.) When it comes to valuing the clothes for a tax deduction, there are a lot of rules, but the one most people use is to deduct the "thrift-shop value" of the clothing, which is essentially what you would pay to buy the same item from a thrift shop. Some charitable organizations like Goodwill and Salvation Army have approximate values for common items posted on their websites. TurboTax also includes an estimated value if you do your income taxes with TurboTax.

It might not sound like much, but figure if you count every shirt you donate at just $2, and you donate 50 shirts, that works out to $100 and a savings of $30 on your taxes. Not bad for putting everything in a box and hauling it down to the donation center.

Selling Baby and Toddler Clothes as Garage Sale

Another way to get money for your used kids’ clothing is to hold a garage sale. In this case, if you sold 50 shirts for $1 each, you would get $50. If you could get $2 a piece, you would get $100.

The catch is that there are a lot of people selling a lot of children’s clothing at a lot of garage sales. In other words, how much baby clothing you can sell depends on how many buyers show up willing and able to buy. Generally to attract much traffic to a garage sale, you need more than just a pile of baby clothes, so unless you have other stuff to round out your garage sale, this might not be the way to go.

Children’s Clothing Consignment Shops and Once Upon a Child

Generally, a consignment shop takes your stuff and tries to sell it. They keep a percentage, often half, and you get the rest. Since a consignment shop doesn’t want merchandise piling up, and only makes a profit when items sell within a reasonable time, many of them mark items down as time goes by. Your percentage remains the same, but the selling value drops.

This model does not necessarily lend itself to clothing since the items aren’t sold for a high enough dollar amount to warrant all of the tracking necessary. Thus, used clothing consignment stores will often just buy the clothes directly from you.

Once Upon a Child is one such children’s second hand store. You take in your children’s clothing, and other items, and they make you an offer. Is Once Upon a Child worth it?

Here is the deal. Used clothing is one thing. Quality used clothing is another. While it is obvious that clothes such be in good condition and without stains or tears, they also need to be brand name. Clothing from Carter’s and Jumping Beans, for example, may draw an offer. Anything from a department store or off-brand catalog or whatever, will not.

I took several boxes of neatly folded clothing, totaling well over 100 pieces, and my Once Upon a Child store offered to buy only 22 of them for a grand total of just over $27.

If you are going to sell your clothes to Once Upon a Child or other child second-hand clothing store, here are some tips.

1. Take Small Amounts – Don’t take a huge lot all at once. This isn’t a good way to clean out your basement, it is a good way to clean out your drawers.  It takes a while to go through and you lose count of what you are selling and at what price. In my example above, I got just over $1 for each piece. Is that a good deal? Considering I already tried a garage sale and plan to donate the rest, it’s better than nothing, but with such a huge load, I lost control over saying yes or no to specific pieces.
2. Separate Your Brand Names - The Once Upon a Child website list their "preferred" brand names. Start by taking in just the clothing you have that matches that list. This maximizes the chances of you getting an offer on most of it. If you want to throw in a few extra pieces just to see what happens, go ahead.
3. Don’t Expect Much – A dollar for a piece of baby clothes or for toddler clothes isn’t a lot. Of course, you won’t get much more donating or selling on your own, either. The good news is you can always say no.
4. Check What Is For Sale First – You get a 20 percent bonus on the amount offered if you take store credit instead of a check. That is only a good deal if you already want to buy. Forcing yourself to buy things just to take advantage of store credit doesn’t make sense when you can get cash. Only take the store credit if you know there are things to buy.
5. Don’t Bother Without Brand Names - The way the OUC business works is that they buy brand name clothing that they can resell for used, but brand name prices. I saw long sleeve Jumping Beans shirts on sale for $7.50. That comes out to just under half the typical online retail price of $16 and even less than what you would pay at full-price in a store. That math doesn’t work for baby clothes that you bought for $3.50 on sale at Target.

Is It Worth Selling Kid’s Clothes to Once Upon a Child?

I don’t mean to single out Once Upon a Child here. It just happens to be the place I went. I assume that most other kid’s consignment shops work similarly. However, I think the key is to determine whether you would get more value out of the tax deduction than out of the second hand sale.

For example, if you are in the 30 percent tax bracket, and a nice sweater provides a $5.00 deduction, then you are netting $1.50 off your income taxes. If OUC or whoever is only offering a dollar, then you are losing money.

On the other hand, they cut you a check immediately, whereas you’ll have to wait until you file your taxes to reap the benefit of the donation.

If you want cash now, Once Upon a Child is a decent alternative.

If you can never rack up enough tax deductions, consider donating the clothing and taking the tax deduction instead.

Is Once Upon a Child Worth It? originally published at Undefeated Daddy

As a father of a two-year old it is distressing that the designers of toddler boys t-shirts are all addle brained monkeys packing a cliché thesaurus. "Daddy’s Little All Star," "Mommy’s Little Angel." Ugh! Are you kidding me.

When your child is first born, all of those tiny shirts that reference other family members are cute. The little sayings like, "Here comes trouble," are adorable. But, now that my son is two-years old, I’d like to dress him like real boy. Is that so much to ask?

Here are the Undefeated Daddy rules for toddler t-shirts.

1. Do not use other family members to make cutesy t-shirts. Guess what, he’s his own person now, he isn’t "Daddy’s Little" anything.
2. Not every shirt needs a big line graphic on it. Sure, a car shirt or a guitar shirt is a cool PART of a wardrobe, but your shirt lineup should have two or three of those and then some that just have cool patterns or graphics.
3. Not every shirt has to have a number on it. Guess what? My kid is two. He doesn’t play any sports, and he sure as hell doesn’t play team sports. And, why in the world would their be a number on a shirt with dinosaurs on it? Am I supposed to buy this shirt because it makes him seem more like My Little All Star?
4. Make your fake sports shirts realistic. We don’t want to pay $20 for a t-shirt that he’ll outgrow in six months. So, I understand not buying a license to print a real NFL team logo on a shirt, but for the love of all that is holy, at least make your fake team name shirts realistic. I doesn’t have to say Denver Broncos on it, but why in the world does it say, "Big City All Stars Football Team Superstar," with a big number in the middle? What the heck is that supposed to be? Big City All Stars with a number is good enough. We get it, it’s a generic sports shirt, don’t beat it into the ground.
5. "Older" sayings and words on a t-shirt for toddlers isn’t funny. A t-shirt that says, "I’m kind of a big deal," could be funny. (Of course, you monkeys would insist on a giant Ron Burgundy picture to ruin any hope of coolness.) However, shirts that say things like, "Girls have cooties," or "When is my curfew," are just stupid. Again, a TWO-YEAR old. It isn’t funny now, and won’t be funny when he’s three or when he’s four.
6. Class – Seriously, can you just make one shirt per lineup that has some class to it. Guess what? It will sell out while your, "Daddy’s Awesome Girl Cootie Inspector 24" shirt sits on the shelf at the discount store.
7. Oh, and those "Property Of" t-shirts? They are funny, clever and cool ONLY if they say Something Athletic Department. If they say a person (or Grandma!) they are both insulting and dumb. Please stop it.

Who has a good idea where to get cool toddler t-shirts without big stupid graphics or big stupid sayings? I’d love to hear about it.

Cool T-Shirts for Toddler Boys originally published at Undefeated Daddy

About this time each year, the stores start moving their winter clothes to the clearance rack to make room for the spring stuff.  As a man, this has probably never made sense to you.  As a dad, it means big bargains!

You see, baby clothes, toddler clothes, and even most kids clothes don’t really fall into the whole spring, summer, winter, thing very well.  That blue long sleeve t-shirt on the $2.99 rack will be just as great for your little on an a breezy May night as it is in the middle of January.

If you don’t want to go to the mall, don’t worry.  They sell baby clothes at tons of the places you already go, Sears, Target, Wal-Mart, and so on.  Just find the baby section, then head for the big signs that say clearance.  Ignore everything in the normal price and sale section and you can scan through the whole smash in five or ten minutes.

If you don’t even want to do that, get online.  Children’s Place does huge sales at the season change and so does Pumpkin Patch and a bunch of others too.

Don’t bother buying things like boots, gloves, mittens, hats, snow pants, coats and so on unless they need them for this winter.  They grow way too fast to guess what size will be right next winter, so whatever waterproof snowman gloves your toddler has now, are the ones he’ll keep, but definitely go ahead and get him some more pants, shirts, and socks.  He’ll need those each and every month from now until next year.

Buy New Baby Clothes Now originally published at Undefeated Daddy