This week-end is the high school graduation in my town of Bexley, Ohio. For the first time in memory graduation gowns were offered to the graduating class as a rental option rather than only a purchase one. I helped to make this happen and I’m feeling deeply proud. I mean I won’t be able to get in and witness the gown return process myself because tickets to Bexley High School graduation rival the BTS 2026 Reunion Tour. I’m thinking I might try to sneak in. Mr. Caudill, the high school principal, will probably add me to a list now.

High school graduation is a huge moment. I’m guessing that in smaller communities like mine, where many parents and grandparents also graduated from the same high school, the sacredness of this rite of passage is further amplified. My son graduated from Bexley High School in 2024 and it really was a magical event. Seeing the sea of students dressed in their robes was really fun. But also we are celebrating a massive intellectual milestone by dressing our children in shiny, single-use oil products that will make them sweat for three hours and then sit in a landfill for 500 years. How often are we all dressed exactly the same in a synthetic outfit? I mean other than almost every time we are invited to be bridesmaids? The opportunity to shift the graduation gown model from purchase to rental seemed like a no-brainer and easy. Just change the model and people will do the new thing.

Except that systems change is so hard.

It often involves effort from people who are not paid (or at least not initially). It is hard to get things organized even when they are great, no-brainer ideas. It’s tough to get people to listen—not because they are bad or lazy, but because they are just busy. I have had less success than I wish in getting three lower school PTO’s together to host a clothing or spirit wear exchange. It isn’t because anyone is against the idea but that people are overstretched and have many priorities. I get it but one can feel demotivated and move on to something easier.

The point of this writing is that this systems change for high school graduation gowns actually happened. I want to reflect on why this idea made it across the finish line. It started a few years ago when I reached out to the primary gown suppliers servicing the US. I will maintain a polite exterior and just share that these folks had very little interest in engaging with me. The current model works for them. They get a predictable amount of money at a solid margin for a single use item without much risk.

The purchase is tied up with all of this huge emotional stuff. The customer’s kid is graduating. Everyone’s life is changing in some way. This fossil fuel-based robe, which will feel very hot... and will not biodegrade, is a symbol of this sacred transition. A few companies have their ‘green polyester’ claim on their website. I won’t comment on that here, because the thing that is most needed is systems change from a linear to a circular model. A business for which change could impact profit is simply not the right candidate to move this systems change forward. I basically relearned something I already knew. Companies change what they do when their customer asks them to.

I gave up on this for a while and worked on other things. Then in December of 2024 I received a call from the high school’s head of experiential learning who governs the global scholars program. The principal (Mr. Caudill, same one who has likely added me to that list I mentioned in the time it took you to get to this paragraph on account of my publicly stated plan to sneak into the graduation ceremony) had suggested that I be tapped to serve as a mentor / advisor for a student who wanted to do something related to fashion and the environment for her project. I said yes immediately.

The student and I had the ideal global scholars partnership: an older mentor with operations experience guiding a motivated student who asked all the right questions. We focused heavily on measurement (and yes, a graduation gown LCA white paper actually exists, so you can sleep tonight). We showed up to our meeting with the school and the gown rep with a fully realized plan rather than vague ideas. That’s the secret to systems change: offering actionable solutions. Because our proposal accounted for the logistics, the school staff knew exactly what was being asked of them and could verify that we weren’t just thoughtlessly creating extra work.

We gave ourselves enough time. The project was finalized for 2026 back in March of 2025. The student offered to collect gowns from that year’s graduating class. People saw the process in action which may have improved engagement for the first year of implementation.

The student who led this global scholars project will graduate this year in a rented robe. She did something with a long-term potential impact which can be repeated all over the country. I’ll probably see her from my hiding spot behind the gown return bins and tell her ‘heyyy’!

Here are some tactical guidelines for anyone looking to implement this in your own community or school.

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For three years, I conducted a hyper-local circular economy pilot out of my garage to see if we could keep clothing in a local value loop. My goal was to move beyond the theory of ‘circularity’ and prove that through a focused system of collection, resale, and repair, we could keep textiles in circulation significantly longer. I was just one person but I wanted to see if the mechanics of a small-scale system could offer a blueprint for something bigger.

It is one thing to contemplate doing something and quite another to go and do it. I made many mistakes and have reflected on SO many ways I wasted time and resources. But throughout this project I woke up feeling energized because I was ‘doing something’. People who I contacted or interacted with were intrigued by this more than anything else. Humans get that trying something new is hard. And interesting.

The Case for a Profit-Driven Hyper-Local Market:

I was unapologetic about seeking a modestly profitable way to do this. This is not because I don’t totally support the work of national nonprofits. I think that hyper-local engines of re-use should sit right next to and feed into national charities, perhaps even function as feeders to them. The work to do this however may not be free or entirely volunteer-led. I envision a vast market of hyper local actors. Starting in 2023 I played the part of a motivated hungry local actor.

Here is what I did:

I deliberately opened up collection. The bins which had previously solicited a specific thing (a halloween costume or damaged sweater) were now labeled to accept anything my fellow community members cared to hand along. I accepted drop offs at my house. I agreed to go to someone’s home to pick things up. Whenever feasible (weather and anticipated volume permitting), I collected via bicycle.

I collected whatever people wanted to shed, and see if I could hyper-locally (or worst case sustainably via online sale) re-circulate it. My biggest fear was that nothing would be given to me. Anyone who enters the post-consumer clothing ecosystem sheds that concern in about five minutes. There is so much stuff. It is suffocating. It’s that lovely iconic video of Lucille Ball and the chocolates on the conveyor belt. Who can possibly keep up?

more details…

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Against my better judgement I am going to admit something here. But first I would like to throw my husband Corey under the bus. My husband, who I adore, relies on AI to do lots of legitimate research. He is quite skilled at using the tool to arm himself with information to make important decisions. I also find that occasionally he asks his AI search tool of choice a question which I find, and tell him, is completely ridiculous.

You can’t figure out how to measure your head so my mom can knit you a hat? You can’t figure out what is the lowest sodium item to order at the restaurant we are going to eat at? You can’t figure out on your own where to take our son surfing for spring break? In a marriage there is sometimes that binary gender trope about how women just want to talk and be listened to..well, now when I’m sharing a problem, Corey actively dispatches ChatGPT to tender a solution I never solicited. Also he points the AI camera at various things that I already know how to repair and...and when the AI tool says ‘just tighten the screw,’ he looks so proud. It makes me crazy.

And yet…. Here is the vulnerable and unflattering admission - I was so nervous and excited to be on Stephanie Haney’s NPR show in Cleveland yesterday that - while standing in the lobby bathroom of the Crowne Plaza hotel - I uploaded a photo of myself with my hair up and also with my hair down and I asked Gemini to choose. GOD I don’t know if I will feel freed later on or mortified and desperate to pull that information back. But it is true. It happened.

I am committed to studying and influencing consumer behavior because the solutions we need for global fashion are incredibly complex. But honestly? There is a specific dopamine rush of gratitude I feel when I get to speak about the intersection of clothing and the planet. Being on Stephanie’s show was wondrous and significant for me personally in ways I am still processing.

Also I’m officially low-key obsessed with both Gail Baugh and Gargi Bhaduri who were also on the show. You can listen to the full segment on Sound of Ideas here:

Listen to the Episode

Gemini said hair up. (I think it was right?)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

I am truly interested in humans. I mean, really, most of them. As a result I am never bored. I have spent 26 hours on a train from Shanghai to Xi-an, hard seat and not even an actual seat, for any of you who traveled in China in the 90’s and know what that means. My mandarin was not good at that time and still I was not bored for a moment. A little weary, sure. A little dehydrated from chewing the gum and teeth tinting betel nut I was offered. Bored? No. When I was very young I read all nine of the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and even tried to implement some of the agriculture methods therein described - I recall hauling some expired milk to pour onto a pumpkin plant I was attempting to cultivate when I was 8 or 9. Not bored. I am frequently the person who is joined at a table in a cafe by a talker or a knitter. Maybe a ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ type. People are flawed and interesting and complex None of us are who we seem. This is also apparent when you tell a community ‘feel free to drop your crap here,’ and later learn what anthropology course you were actually embarking upon...

I wrote in my last segment about the feelings of shame and odd liberation which some people displayed when asking me to allow them to drop off, or inviting me to pick up stuff from their homes. These were the ‘in person’ or ‘live’ collection experiences. I’m writing here about some of what appeared anonymously in the bins which I mentioned were publicly available for three full years.

Weighted vests - Oh I bet there are more of those coming. Slimming waist contraptions - Did this one not work? Did they find a better one? Did they cultivate a different relationship with their body and body image? If so good for them! Multiples of medical professional uniforms - Did the person decide to leave the medical field because of the soul breaking experiences they had during Covid? Had they just gained or lost weight or found a brand they liked better? Saris - Was this a sari purchased by a traveler to India who had been invited to a wedding and now feared accusations of cultural appropriation? Multiples of well-worn pants with an elasticated waist. And matching tops - I know this person because I am them in some ways - Once I identify something I really like - in my case I am embarrassed to admit it might be fleece pants from Brandy Melville - I know, I know, but this writing is about…not judging…I wear and wear and wear them. Compression sleeves for running - Probably right after the Columbus Marathon. Did this runner finish? Did she run a full or a half? Period stained underpants and Period stained denim cut-off shorts - Teen-agers experience so much anguish related to their periods. During the school day they are often bureaucratically prevented from going to the bathroom when they really need to. It is incredibly stressful to be a teen-aged girl, have your period, and go to high school. Fuck. Sorry you have to go through all of that. Boy Scout uniforms - For this to end up in my possession instead of back with the scouts signifies something. Did the family just get overwhelmed or did something bigger happen? Did the scout abruptly exit? Are the grandparents suddenly caring for this scout? Is he OK? Expensive swimwear with the tags on - Did the trip get cancelled? Was there some horribly epic 5 day flight issue and they never even got to Atlantis even after they pre-paid for everything?

One collection which I found so complex and beautiful that I just stared at it on the table for a while…. A large zip lock bag which contained 28 condoms, a rosary, and a pride flag. If this does not exemplify the complexity of the human condition I am not sure what does. Why did this person no longer need these supplies? The fact that the whole bag was dropped in a bin gave me pause. If the person had been sent to conversion therapy camp they would undoubtedly have kept the rosary. I want so badly to meet that human and learn their story. And probably hug them.

We adorn ourselves as dictated by necessity. By fantasy. By passion. By our secret or public truth. And we are changing all the time. Our station in life changes. Our bodies change. Our jobs change. Our relationships change. We need to shed some things as we pick up new ones. For the person who gave me 17 pairs of those socks they issue you when you have a colonoscopy I need to ask - Did you steal those? Did you yourself have all 17 colonoscopies, and if so what compelled you to keep ALL of the socks they gave you? Or did you buy them? They are grippy. I will give you that much….

Sorting through the ‘consumption pickle’ is one thing. Building a repeatable, safe, and scalable system to handle the physical reality of 11,000 items in a garage is another. For those who want to see the actual mechanics of the hyper-local collection—from quarantine protocols to the Costco table setup—read on.

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Reasons I have purchased new clothing: Because someone broke up with me—or because I broke up with them. Because I got the promotion, or because I didn’t. Because I was having a great time with my friends. Because I was happy. Because I was lonely. Because I had a new perspective and wanted to manifest it. Because I was bored during the Super Bowl, not the Bad Bunny part, just the football part. Because I was afraid of future scarcity of some kind and thought I should stock up. The reasons were endless, but the result was always the same: more stuff.

Through my three year clothing collection pilot I learned a lot about people and their relationship with their stuff. Once it was known in Bexley, Ohio, that I was collecting clothing, the bins I mentioned in a previous writing began to be consistently full. Additionally, people began calling me to ask if they could bring over their stuff. They began bringing it directly to my house. My driveway became the site of an unanticipated anthropological journey into our consumption and the complex feelings that follow it.

I reflect on my own buying habits from teen-age years up to now. It feels like people obtained THE THING which was trending but maybe it was less common to obtain multiples? I remember being really happy to have a pair of Guess jeans, a shaker knit sweater, or those 1984 parachute pants—all likely from The Limited. I owned a pair of knickers in the 4th grade. I think I was in the local paper wearing these knickers. I loved them. But again, I had one pair and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to procure three more pairs. Still though having the right kind of adornment defined me, as it does so many of us. I was someone different, I was someone… when I had the exact item I wanted to wear.

Living in New York in my 20’s I felt this acutely as well. I’m certain that I bought things I didn’t need but I didn’t really have the money to buy a whole bunch of stuff. And I really wasn’t shopping 2nd hand. Each time I moved I was always surprised by how much stuff I owned.

At a clear point my experience stopped being typical. I started working for clothing companies (primarily because I had studied mandarin, not because I ‘loved clothes’), and availed myself of associate discounts. And would buy multiples of items because it was like a uniform. Then there were the Abercrombie days - entirely new wardrobes every season, bins of ‘old’ clothes replaced by the new corporate uniform before the weather even changed.

In my forties I started to succumb to peer pressure and began to make the occasional luxury purchase. I still have most of these items. I do not view luxury as the problem. There is already a thriving resale market for luxury accessories. I cherish the ones I purchased. One could almost make the argument the luxury is how we should think about everything we buy, even our t-shirts. Is this good quality? Does it serve many uses? Will it last?

People would roll up to my house with overflowing car loads of their clothing. As they unloaded the contents of their car they would say to me ‘Please take all of this stuff and please do not tell anyone I bought all of this’. People dropped off or asked me to pick up LITERAL full car loads of clothing which still had tags on it. I did an analysis of one such ‘haul’: From one person I collected 180 pieces of clothing, its production being equal to roughly 2200 lbs of carbon emissions (or burning 1000 lbs of coal), 1700 kilowatt hours of energy - equal to 1.6 years of total home electricity, and 50,000 gallons of water, equal to filling a 20’ by 40’ swimming pool.

As they looked at what they had culled from their wardrobe (we are always striving for a capsule wardrobe aren’t we?) I observed the emotions people experienced. Reflecting on being a different size now and needing to offload an enormous wardrobe in the original size range. On having shopped to soothe themselves. There was a lot of vulnerability. Some shame. Some remorse. Several people couldn’t believe how much money they had spent on the clothing they were getting rid of. People had hoarded clothing for their kids and were really happy to be done. But half the clothing still had tags. There was a wide range of perceived value. Some hauls consisted of endless TJMaxx bargains. Some consisted of full price high end store purchases. Even what people placed anonymously in the metal bins was so interesting. There were lots of cashmere sweaters NOT in need of repair. People expressed to me how happy they were not to be giving clothing to a national charity. I have a lot to say about national charities and it is generally positive. In most cases it wasn’t that my friends hated Goodwill for example at all, but that they didn’t like the anonymity of it. It pained them to imagine their stuff thrown into those massive industrial sorting bins. They had formed relationships with their wardrobes. It makes sense because they certainly had spent a lot of time compiling them. I was also asked to pick up or accept clothing from people who had just entered assisted living, or whose spouse had recently died, or who had lost a bunch of weight from an illness or a life change. And listen, some people were happy to get rid of what was in their closets expressly so that they could go on a trip to buy all new stuff.

To those of you reading my substack who know you are among those mentioned here, please know that I will NEVER divulge who you are. Thank you for including me on your journey as you reevaluated your relationship with consumption. How did we get here? How did we decide that we needed all of this stuff?

As a general rule I do not feel that people adequately assess the investment they make year over year in money and in time to buy clothing. And then to maintain their clothing (or not) and to clean their clothing. If we have so much of it and so little time it can feel overwhelming to think about mending something ourselves. And it is very expensive to pay for a repair in the US. Why bother when a new one is…. I think we have gotten ourselves into a complex consumption pickle.

When I stop and ask myself what makes me feel happy my answers I find haven’t changed that much since I was a teen-ager. OK the bedtime has changed. I like to read books and watch movies. I like to be outside. I like to be around friends. I like to listen to music. I like to make and eat food. I like to travel. Oddly, none of these things really involve a thought about a lot of outfits, certainly not as many as I still own. Where is the disconnect? Honestly my busier self would have fucking HATED my current slightly slower more intentional self. It is great that you have time to think about your privileged little zero waste life when I am raising small kids, running a household, building a career, traveling for work, entertaining 20 people for passover… don’t tell me how to spend my limited time please. But actually I wish my current self (using a very energy intensive fossil fuel burning time machine I’m sure) could have had a real conversation with my then self. I think I could have made my then self happier.

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Attempts to boil the ocean are as old as time. I once had the great fortune to stand before the 48 meter long bas-relief at Angkor Wat and view the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. This image has stayed with me long since: It reminds us that transformation requires rhythmic labor, the cooperation of unlikely allies, and a willingness to face the ‘poison’ of the old system before we reach the nectar of the new. Attempts to solve an entire enormous problem are often not feasible. Smaller, pixelated shifts in behavior, if adopted and repeated across communities, might be a thing. In this spirit as I continued on my hyper local circular economy I wanted to be deliberate and solve one problem at a time. Just as those unlikely allies churned for nectar, I began my own rhythmic labor with something much more mundane: school backpacks.

Following the conclusion of halloween and of my costume collection effort, I gave thought to what I might try to collect next. I was and am aware that we can all often feel overwhelmed when we try to solve, sort, handle too many things at once. I landed on school backpacks. My thinking was that every kid in the United States whose parents can afford it typically starts each school year with a new one. People probably had these in their possession and no great solution for what to do with them. Also, I had seen so many backpacks, sad looking ones, at the ‘bins’ (outlet locations of national charities for products which did not sell in their stores). I thought it might be interesting to see what happened if I collected the retired backpacks locally and tried to mend them or perhaps make something out of them.

You may recall from my first writing that I had designed my collection bins as modular. I made them easy to modify with a new message. I again took out my stencils (I enjoyed listening to several hours of an audio book while doing this but I might recommend just getting them printed somewhere) and fashioned collection invitation number two. Please drop tired old backpacks here. I replaced one sign with another.

Once again I got a strong response. Backpack after backpack showed up in the bins. In total I collected around 60 backpacks over a 45 day period. The ones which were in acceptable shape I did take to a local resource center and they were handed out to families with kids who needed them. The ones which were pretty bad I held on to. Once I had collected a bunch of them I took them to an industrial laundry and washed them. I had met one of the founders of an organization in Cincinnati called Sew Valley earlier in the year and I took the back packs there. We deconstructed them and they were made into bucket hats which I later sold from my trike.

This was the first time I had made something from post consumer waste. The hats cost about as much to produce as I sold them for, so there is that. But people loved the story behind them. I felt abundant pride.

The next month I collected sweaters with holes in them. With these sweaters (let’s call it sweater waste why don’t we?) I did two things - the ones which I deemed ‘salvageable’ I carefully laundered and mended. I want to mention I did an ‘ok’ job of mending these items using a mending loom which I purchased on Facebook Marketplace for $8. These were not works of art but were valued as completed restoration projects by someone who cared. I sold every sweater which I had mended at a local festival in my town. And on this specific day in August the temperature was like 90 degrees. People still wanted them. The sweaters which were truly finished being sweaters (beyond repair) I made into beanies. They are also adorable and have sold on and off line.

There is a learning here which I‘m not quite finished with. I’m still in it. Pick one thing, do something to learn more about it. Take what you learned to the next thing. If I say to you, or if we say to each other - the world is on fire! We have to stop all buying of the things right now! ahhhhh!!!! Even if that is true, and what we should do I fear we will wear ourselves out. Let’s pick one thing, investigate it deeply, and find a creative solution or two. Then we can move on to the next thing. Maybe this sounds like a nerdy approach.

Sarah Vowell is one of my favorite writers. In The Partly Cloudy Patriot she writes “Nerds are the only people who can see the world for what it is. To everyone else, a bridge is just a way to get across the water. To a nerd, it’s a series of stress points, rivets, and specific metallurgical properties. They see the components. They see the tiny, boring details that actually make the big things work. And when the big things break, the only person who can fix them is the person who was obsessed with the details in the first place.” I proudly consider myself to be a nerd. I embrace a pixelated view of the world and a pixelated set of small solutions which in aggregation actually ARE the ocean….

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I’ve spent the last three months in a freezing Columbus winter, pining for spring. Not just for the weather, but for the moment I can finally roll out my ‘vending contraption’ and get back to the sidewalk.

I knew that I wanted to offer a hyper local solution and scale a hyper local circular economy. I wanted to figure out how to become part of the local ecosystem of Bexley, Ohio. I wanted to be part of the farmers market. I initially applied to the farmer’s market network and they responded that I was not eligible to join because I wasn’t in agriculture. I respected the agriculture-only rule, but I knew my circular fashion loop belonged where the people were. I thought about creative solutions. The Bexley Farmers Market extends on Dawson from Bexley Park to Main Street where it ends. I happened to know the dermatologist who has a practice on the corner of Dawson and Main Street. I called him and asked him if by any chance I could maybe park my vending contraption on his lawn every Thursday during the farmers market. I was sure there would be some reason why he couldn’t. Maybe his landlord would object. Maybe he didn’t have control over the lawn outside of his business. Who knew what the reason for ‘no’ would be? Recall my last writing about imposter syndrome. Maybe some generational scarcity mind-set at play here too. I left him a message and do you know what he said? ‘Sure!’. That was it. Sure! OK.

What I was selling - more on that in a later writing. Just know that there is a lot of opportunity to resell at a local level. Clothing exists in abundance. There is a lot of labor involved. It can be managed but it is significant. Reader I will never lie to you.

I started to think about how I could show up in a fun way in my neighborhood to profitably sell things locally. What would resonate with people walking by? What was authentic? I remembered seeing this book bike that my local library had, and brought out for different events. I thought this could be a fun idea so I went to the library and asked them if I could take a look at it. It was with no small amount of pride that the librarian on duty took me to the back of the building, out the door and down the stairs to a storage room. And there, was, up close, the Haley Bicycle Book Trike. It was even more adorable close up. I was in love. That was what I wanted to use to promote my local fashion solution to my small world.

I did some research and made contact with Haley Tricycles. Haley Tricycles is basically this one amazing, gentle, creative guy, Stephen Horcha. I called him and asked him if I could go and visit him and he said sure. His business is located in north Philadelphia. It so happened that my college reunion was coming up, and was also in Philadelphia. So I made an appointment. I was so excited.

I still smile when I think about that visit. Stephen Horcha makes around 35 custom trikes per year. Each custom and each with abundant care. His business is located in what was, years ago, a fabric dying mill in the 1800’s. OK that was kind of a perfect historical backdrop for this mission. But the magic of Haley Tricycles doesn’t end there. Stephen’s business space is located on the second floor of this complex. The only way to get up there is through a spiral staircase, because Haley Tricycles is located in what was originally the horse stable. I got there and was like, what? What is happening here? How do you get these things out of here once they are done? Simple, Stephen said. He showed us the pulley system he had designed. The finished trikes are lowered via a pulley system out of the window. But not down to the street and a waiting truck. That would be too easy right? It felt like a glitch in the space-time continuum: a handcrafted 21st-century trike being lowered by a 19th-century pulley system from a second-story window, landing gently onto another waiting trike in the cobblestone courtyard below. Then THIS trike is used to move the box out to the street where a truck can load it for shipment. I was in love. In love with Stephen. In love with his pulley system. I was now maniacally in love with the idea of owning a trike. In about 45 minutes we talked through all of the details. I wanted a mobile store which could display clothing and accessories so I needed ample ‘counter space’. I also wanted to be able to hang clothing. Could a trike design handle all of this? Stephen listened and was ready with viable solutions.

I should mention that he had never been asked to design a trike specifically for clothing or fashion sales and he was enthusiastically up for the challenge. I placed the order and went to my college reunion.

Stephen and I had limited communication to follow up on the list of milestones which he had listed out for me. I needed to select paint colors. I needed to send him a stencil which he could use to apply my logo. I needed to send him a logo. Done, done, and done. Stephen shipped the trike on time. I am including the video of the lowering of my trike from the window down to the trike in the courtyard. It arrived. Note to future trike owners: Do not have your shipment delivered to a Giant Eagle parking lot unless you have a professional mechanic—or at least a very large box of tissues—on standby. I might have shed a few tears of frustration in the parking lot. I might have been saved by the manager of a bike shop called Roll. The guy somehow loaded the parts of the trike into his Subaru Forester and possibly offered me a tissue. A week later I had an assembled trike. I have experienced moments of great joy in my life. I’ve had two children. I’ve fallen in love. I’ve finished a few marathons. The feeling of exhilaration I experienced when I rode that trike out of Roll and back to my house is among my strongest positive memories to date.

Reader, this journey is not yet over. We don’t yet know the full final positive impact of the trike. I can tell you that it paid for itself two times over during the first 18 months I have had it. To me it is also a symbol of creative problem solving and a commitment to a list of values. Local. Carbon Neutral. Positive. Approachable. In addition to selling hundreds of garments which people in my community dropped into a collection bin because they didn’t want, and ensuring that branded product (things with Bexley or Capital University printed on it), I have also had hundreds of meaningful conversations with people about the value of reduced consumption. About the value of local community engagement. About the importance that we care for the world we live in by starting right where we are. Stand in place. Look around you. Look over your left shoulder. Over your right shoulder. Turn around and look behind you. What can you do to solve a problem? Now go try to solve it.

“Get the Haley Trike Blueprint.”

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We often talk about sustainability as an act of 'doing more,' but for the parents in my community, it started as a palpable need to 'have less.' I realized I wasn't just building a bin; I was providing a service of clearing—allowing them to shed the physical weight of items that no longer brought joy, without the guilt of the landfill.

During the days following the launch of my halloween collection experiment I visited each location—usually a bin sitting just outside the principal’s office—and lovingly collected the contents to bring back to my house. I was exhilarated when I found them full. They were full a lot.

The joy and exhilaration I felt were tremendous.

I was doing something. It might be a failure. It might prove to be unreasonably labor-intensive (spoiler: it kind of is and kind of isn’t). But I had put one shaky foot in front of the other and started.

The Ground Truth of Imposter Syndrome

I’ll be honest: I experienced—and still experience—major imposter syndrome. I was deeply concerned about what former colleagues would say about me in private. Why did I care? I’m really not sure.

As I age and engage more with this marvelous, real, imperfect, wounded world, I find I have fewer and fewer fucks to give about what people think. I still maintain a healthy first-generation standard of accountability and probably some inherited OCD (Is this right? Is this correct? Can I check again? And again?). But the mission started to outweigh the ego.

The Logistics: From Garage to Tuff Shed

Once collected, the question was: What now?

By the end of the first month, I had 97 costumes in my garage and a significant logistical puzzle to solve. Below the line for my paid subscribers, I’m sharing the raw data of how those costumes actually moved: the laundering, the multi-channel sales, and the empty racks at the sister school that gave me the validation I needed..

It was, of course, too late to sell these locally. This is the friction with seasonal items: everyone is finished with Halloween on November 1st, and since Halloween isn’t widely celebrated in the Global South, these items don’t have a natural “second home” in the traditional export market.

I set aside my academic curiosity about the larger global supply chain and focused on the immediate mission: Can I circulate these items locally? If so, how? And can it be at all profitable?

The Labor of Love

I spent one full morning sorting and organizing. Interestingly, none of the costumes were too worn to offer again. A few needed laundering—I machine-washed them and hung them to dry. I organized the multi-piece sets (like the Puss in Boots with the hat, belt, and blouse) into bags. Then, I put them all away until September of 2023.

When autumn rolled around again, I took three paths:

1. Direct Sales: I listed some on Facebook Marketplace.

2. Offline Events: I sold some at my local farmers market and a neighborhood fall festival (using my trike—more on that journey in a future post).

3. The Direct Donation: About ten days before Halloween, I reached out to a local school, many of whose families are eligible for the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP). I dropped off a rack of costumes on a pre-arranged day, and the school ambassador let families know that at drop-off and pick-up on a certain school day there would be costumes available to families free of charge.

I promised to return that afternoon to retrieve the rack and any leftovers; I didn’t want the school to spend a single minute of extra labor accommodating my experiment.

Mission vs. Charity

It’s important to note: My mission was not charity. It was environmental impact with a side order of social impact.

While I was happy that families might appreciate a free costume, I was most gratified by the efficiency. I didn’t “know” what would happen to these costumes if I had dropped them at a national charity on October 21st. But I felt strong confidence that the costumes left at that school were used by families in my community that Halloween.

When I returned to the school that afternoon, I expected a picked-over rack. Instead, I found it completely empty. I put the empty racks in my car and sat there for a moment. I felt overwhelmed. Was it validation? I think so.

The Playbook for the PTO

I believe a Parent Teacher Organization could easily run this annually:

• Collect: Make it easy for families to shed what they are finished with.

• Organize: Have volunteers clean and bag the items.

• Store: Put them away for the off-season.

• Circulate: Host a sale in September (money for the PTO) and a discrete giveaway for families in need.

The “Olaf” Problem

Of course, there is going to be the Olaf, the stray Minion, the superhero with the peeling logo.

I don’t have a perfect answer for this yet. I actually get annoyed when people vaguely suggest we can “up-cycle” our way out of bad design. Most Halloween costumes are 100% synthetic. My hope is that one day, these will have a dedicated consumer waste channel for chemical recycling. Until then, we de-Olaf them where we can and keep searching for the “ground truth.”

The Final Count:

• 97 costumes in the initial invitation.

• 57 collected throughout the year.

• 36 sold on Facebook.

• 26 sold offline.

• 92 costumes donated to a local school who expressed interest.

Next time, I’m taking you on the road—literally. We’re talking about the 'Trike Journey' and how a custom built cargo bike became my most important piece of infrastructure.

I am the underachiever in my family.

I’ve come to terms with this, but the evidence is omni-present. My brother spent his gap year at a wooden hull boat-building school in Maine before becoming a physician. My father built three—yes, three—harpsichords in his lifetime. He once built a Heathkit computer from a kit in the 1980s just to see if he could.

So, when I decided I needed to build a receptacle for used clothing, I obsessed and wrung my hands as though I were engineering a complex instrument worthy of living and deceased relatives’ critique.

It was just a bin. To me, it also represented a quiet revolution. It was the start of a deep dive into what actually happens to our “end of first life” stuff. It was a major step away from my years spent with my head down at A&F, working to support and improve the efficiency of global sourcing—a job I loved, but the purpose of which I seldom evaluated.

This? This was a real, local thing. I was deeply engaged.

The Design Brief: Less Plastic, More Oscar

I wanted the bin to be lightweight, easy to transport, and adaptable. Most importantly, I wanted it to have as little plastic as possible. I thought about the “end of life” of the bin itself—it needed to be recyclable or reusable to the fullest extent.

I went over to Lowe’s and also spent some time at Walmart. I’m painfully aware that these big-box brands don’t always align with my values—especially as they shift away from DEI initiatives and LGBTQ+ advocacy. But I wanted the materials for this bin to be accessible. If I want you to be able to build this, I have to source it from the places that exist in every town.

I looked at yard waste containers—collapsible, but hard to make “cute.” I looked at “toters”—those giant plastic rolling trash containers. They were too heavy, too “trash-y,” and represented exactly the kind of massive plastic footprint I was trying to avoid.

I landed on the humble aluminum trash can. The kind Oscar the Grouch inhabits. It’s lightweight, durable, and can eventually be recycled as scrap metal.

Channeling My Maternal Grandfather

To solve the signage, I needed a pole. I bought a 2x4 and located a rusty saw that belonged to my maternal grandfather John.

Note on my grandfather: He spent his career producing “easy to assemble” furniture. But in his spare time, he was a master: he built me a wooden dollhouse with working electricity, a barn for my Fisher Price animals, and a rocking horse. I imagine he felt some frustration making prefab furniture for a living while being a master maker at heart.

Again, from a “maker” standpoint, I am an underachiever on both sides of my family. I really needed this bin to be a success.

I'm keeping the exact dimensions and the printable blueprint for paid subscribers to help fund the research for our next collection pilot. Thank you for supporting the ground truth.

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I am obsessed with the “After.”

The part people find exhausting, or gross, or beneath them is the part I find fascinating: what follows that courageous closet clean-out?

Years ago, when I had small kids, Marie Kondo’s book was like porn to me. Fuck yeah, minimalist spaces where I can actually hear myself think. Fuck yeah, saying goodbye to anything that doesn’t spark joy. I was all in.

But I want to offer Marie some “thought partnership.” She isn’t wrong or bad, and it’s not her job to fix a global supply chain, but there is a massive hole in the “spark joy” philosophy: The assumption that “donating it” makes it disappear.

I’m a frequent flyer on FB Marketplace. On one hand, if I receive one more “Hello, is this still available?” I might tear off my own head and eat it. On the other hand, a stranger coming to my house to pick up a lamp is a solid indicator that the lamp is still wanted and remains in use.

But what about the things that only have value in our specific zip code?

I recently cleaned out my daughter’s closet while she was abroad. I counted eleven soccer practice t-shirts. Eleven. We do laundry weekly—why does one human need a soccer shirt for every day of the week plus spares?

Here is the “Threadbare Truth”: If a branded item leaves the area where it has meaning, it’s dead. No one three towns away cares about your elementary school mascot. If a Wilsonville Elementary Walrus hoodie leaves Wilsonville, it is on a fast track to a landfill or an incinerator.

Communities are groups of people who cheer for each other. We wear the Walrus because we love the community. But how do we protect that love without drowning in “spirit wear” waste?

Here is my 5-step disruptive plan for the neighborhood:

Action 1: Kill the Graduation Gown Monopoly. Shift gowns to a rental model now. This May. Your school’s gown provider will tell you they aren’t “durable enough” to be reused. Persevere. That is not true. It is profitable and comparatively efficient selling single-use polyester to anxious parents. The Industry Secret: I reached out to every major gown maker. I didn’t receive much response. Why would I? They’ve found a way to monetize parental sentimentality. We need to stop buying the single-use crap and start a school-led rental inventory or demand a rental service from the same providers of the ‘keeper’ model. By year three, the school or the company owns the inventory and the waste stops.

Action 2: Stop Sourcing Like Amateurs. Usually, the person procuring the inventory of school spirit wear is likely a saintly PTO volunteer, not a sourcing expert. We need to simplify. No years on the shirts. Abandon endless personalization options. Single-digit SKUs (one hoodie, one tee, one hat). Make them awesome quality—good fabric, good construction—so they actually last through three younger siblings.

Action 3: The “Bougie” Exchange. Stop thinking of spirit wear exchanges as “charity” for families who can’t afford a $40 hoodie. Make the exchange a high-energy, FOMO-filled event. Charge a small fee. I bet a well-run exchange could generate as much cash for the PTO as the original sale—without a single new garment being manufactured.

Action 4: Make Commemorative Tees the New Second-Hand Smoke. Giving out a 100% polyester t-shirt for a 5K “Turkey Trot” should be viewed as a social faux pas. It’s boring. It’s wasteful. The Alternative: If they passionately need to show loyalty to a recurring event, I don’t know, use “flair”? A sew-on patch or a high-quality button. Let people show off their five-year streak with accumulated patches on one good jacket instead of five mediocre shirts they’ll never wear again.

Action 5: Recruit the “Student Special Ops.” We need to stop treating sustainability as a task for over-scheduled parents and start treating it as a leadership lab for the students. Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t just “aware” of the climate—they’re frustrated by the friction of the old systems. Empower the Environmental Club or the Student Council to run these exchanges. They need adult “hero support” in the background to handle the logistics, but let the kids handle the messaging. When a peer—or a grandchild—explains why a sew-on patch is cooler than a 5th-grade fun run shirt, parents actually listen.

Let’s stop purging our closets just to fill up someone else’s landfill. Let’s keep the Walrus in Wilsonville.

Textile waste is a massive, tangled ecosystem. When I decided to launch an experiment in my hometown of Bexley, Ohio, I knew I had to go hyper-local—partly to simplify the logistics, but mostly to see if there was a real opportunity to keep clothing circulating in the same community where it was purchased.

I decided to start with one specific category: Halloween costumes.

I happen to love Halloween. Growing up, my mother (a retired physician) hand-sewed every single costume. She made my fiancé’s costume. She made our entire family matching outfits every year. We were a pride of lions; we were The Incredibles; we were Avatars. My kids would dance around in those costumes for hours, clutching their plastic pumpkins, waiting for the sun to go down.

But the magic of the “family fleet” has an expiration date. In 2015, my kids realized they would literally rather be dead than be seen in public in matching hand-sewn Teletubbies outfits. Somewhere in a sewing room in Fort Collins, Colorado, there is a magnificent, half-finished Tinky Winky suit that never saw the light of day.

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Featuring Heather Mohrman, and a year of choosing “enough.”

OK, first: Heather.

Heather is a community leader in Columbus, Ohio, deeply involved in service work supporting women experiencing vulnerability, exploitation, and trauma. She is the co-founder of a nonprofit serving women at risk of sex trafficking. She lives a purpose-driven life.

She is also ridiculously beautiful. Like model beautiful. I hate her a little.

She contacted me to ask if I had something that fit a very specific color palette she’d been given (more on that in a minute). She knew my work, which felt… flimsy compared to hers, but let’s move on with the fucking story about fucking perfect Heather.

Heather didn’t buy new clothing in 2025.

When I asked her when she realized she was really doing it—actually committing—she didn’t hesitate.

“It was two moments, back to back.”

The first came on a couples’ trip. Like many of us would, she bought a few new beach-appropriate outfits—nothing extravagant, just pieces that felt easy and fun. During the trip, the pants she had just bought literally ripped.

“They were such poor quality,” she told me. “I had to wrap a sweater around my waist. And I realized—I have no idea where these came from. I don’t know who made them or under what conditions. I only bought them because they were cheap.”

That moment stuck. Then her birthday arrived, and with it, a bigger reckoning.

“I felt like I was up to my eyeballs in stuff. My closet was overflowing.”

Heather works hybrid and spends three days a week in sweatpants. Realistically, she could get by with five solid outfits. So why did she own so much clothing?

She also started thinking about how bodies change—weight shifts, comfort needs evolve—and how keeping massive amounts of clothing locked into one size bracket makes less and less sense over time.

“That’s when I decided: I’m not buying new clothes in 2025.”

Her rules were simple. Underwear and shoes were allowed. Everything else? No new purchases.

She did slip once. She bought a shirt to comply with a birthday party color palette (this is when she called me; I completely failed to help her find something secondhand, forcing her into a mall and essentially making her fail her year-long goal. I blame myself).

“I regretted it immediately,” she said. “I only bought it to fit the theme, and honestly? The dumb holiday pictures weren’t even that cute.”

When I asked what surprised her most about the year, her answer was simple.

“I already have plenty of what I need.”

There were moments when she didn’t have quite the right thing for an event—but nothing she couldn’t borrow or work around.

She also admitted something that might resonate: she’s never loved shopping. She’s tall, and the experience has never felt fun or effortless. Still, she used to fall into that familiar cycle—the low-level irritation that shopping temporarily soothes.

“I don’t miss that at all,” she said. “I don’t miss using shopping to self-soothe.”

Her proudest secondhand find?

“A fall sweater from Volunteers of America on East Broad Street—for three dollars.”

She wears it constantly. It’s perfect. She gets compliments all the time.

She did note that thrift store prices aren’t always what they once were—a complicated issue with real equity implications. Heather and I both think about this a lot, from social impact and circular economy perspectives. But if you’re reading this and can generally afford to buy new: choosing secondhand still has measurable environmental impact and saves you money. Full stop.

Heather doesn’t believe anyone needs to go “all in” to start buying less. Her advice is joyful, not prescriptive.

“Commit to one part of your body.”

Pants. Shirts. Coats. Pick one category and decide you won’t buy it new. Start small. Build confidence. Build habit. Make it sustainable.

Heather is also honest about something many parents wrestle with: she’s the purchaser for a family of four.

“I don’t always feel great about that,” she admitted.

But her choices have changed how she thinks about buying for others—and her daughter is paying attention.

That awareness isn’t accidental. Heather recently attended training with She Has a Name, a Columbus-based nonprofit fighting human trafficking, and has spent over a decade working in the anti-trafficking world. She understands supply chains and labor conditions deeply.

“I know too much to pretend it doesn’t matter.”

This year-long commitment wasn’t about perfection. It was about alignment.

That’s the quiet power of stories like Heather’s—not dramatic deprivation or moral purity, but the steady realization that enough is already here, and that choosing less can feel surprisingly freeing.

Heather is a terrific human, and I’m only about 15% joking when I taunt her for being a little perfect. Of course she isn’t. She’s a busy working parent. Sometimes I congratulate myself just for remembering eyebrow liner and ordering dog food. Heather managed to layer real behavioral change into an already full, probably chaotic, slightly messy life.

That’s worth celebrating. And maybe emulating.