Scoring cash for unwanted clothes in your closet

LOWER GWYNEDD, Pa. (WPVI) -- Clothing resale has become a multi-billion dollar business and many families are cashing in now that their kids are back in school.

One Montgomery County family opened up their closet to the experts, who helped them make hundreds of dollars from those unwanted clothes.

The Ladson family, from Lower Gwynedd, has two boys finally going back to school and mom Cari is taking aim at her family's bedroom closets.

Digging through drawers and trying to declutter all the outgrown and unwanted clothing can be worth big bucks.

Cari started cleaning out the closet in her kids rooms and then her own.

But how do you turn that pile of clothes into a pile of cash?

Enter resale expert Lauren Lerner.

"This looks like hundreds and hundreds of dollars to me," said Lauren.

She says for the super motivated, sell online.

Websites like Poshmark, Tradesy and Threadflip let you post photos of your still trendy threads to market and sell online.

Lauren says you'll score top dollar for presentation and popular brands.

For example, a Shashana dress retails for about $200 and if effectively resold, it could fetch as much as $70 dollars.

A kids polo short would run about $35 brand new. But used could get about $20 bucks.

What about a top with a stain?

"Something like this I would say would probably sell for about $15 dollars, but you know with the stain I'd probably sell it anywhere from $7-$10 dollars," said Lauren.

That's about $100 dollars for just three items!

But if this seems like just too buch work, you can also bag it.

With ThredUP, they send you a bag, you fill it up and they sell it for you.

Other companies like the Real Real and Flipsize offer similar deals.

The Ladsons toss four bags on the doorstep and off they go.

Their destination is a sprawling warehouse just outside San Francisco where the ThredUP team inspects each item, looking for quality and sellability.

"We're looking for things that are like new condition so that when our customers receive the item they feel like they're getting a great new addition to their wardrobe," said Alba Barragan, Operation Training Supervisor.

The clothes fetched a total of $262 dollars, bringing their grand total to $362 dollars in cold, hard cash right to their pockets.