If you’re looking to part with some of your clothing, you are most certainly far from being alone. After all, the average person living in the United States is now likely to have more clothing than they really know what to do with. As a matter of fact, the average American woman has at least 30 different outfits, while a woman living just 90 years in the past would have had only around nine total outfits – and even that was considered to be quite well off indeed, as many had much less. For a great many people, the overflow of clothing is real, as now we buy up to double what someone just 20 years in the past would have been buying in terms of their wardrobes.

But how can you thin out your wardrobe? For one thing, you can remove anything that you haven’t worn for at least six months, if not longer – especially if you live in a climate that boasts only one or two seasons. In addition to this, pruning anything that no longer fits you or that doesn’t suit your current style is also ideal, as such pieces are also highly likely to begin to contribute to clutter. But under no circumstances should you throw these pieces of clothing away.

Already, there is a very real problem with waste in the United States, particularly when it comes to textile waste. After all, one person alone will throw away, on average, more than 70 pounds of textiles in a single year, though nearly 100% of these textiles are able to be donated. Unfortunately, only around 15% of all used clothing is given in the form of donations, meaning that up to ten and a half million tons of textile waste is created over the course of just one single year. This means that textiles account for up to 5% of all municipal waste throughout the country. However, this is something that can be changed.

Donating your textiles and used clothing is something that can be hugely beneficial not just for reducing the total amount of waste you are producing, but for helping military families and other such people in need as well. Helping military families can be done in many ways through wounded veterans charities and other such charities, but not everyone necessarily has the means for helping military families through monetary donations. Fortunately, helping military families is something that can be accomplished through used clothing donations and various other household donations, meaning that your old clothing and other textile goods can go towards helping military families. Aside from helping military families, there are many other paths to take as well, such as helping other such families in need through giving local clothing donations to other charities that are looking for donations, such as the American Red Cross often is.

And the impact of helping military families and other people in need in this way really does have a hugely positive environmental result as well. After all, the year of 2006 had already found that up to two and a half billion pounds of clothing were being kept out of landfills thanks to used clothing donations. In the years that have followed since, this number has only continued to increase. Nowadays, well over four and a half billion pounds of clothing are saved from the landfills through used clothes donations as well. Hopefully, this is a trend that will keep growing and growing and growing as time continues to pass ever onward.

From helping military families in need to saving the planet (or both), there are many great reasons to give your used clothes to charitable organizations all throughout the United States. The value of charitable donations is currently a high one, but is certainly only likely to continue to grow higher and higher as time passes on. At the end of the day, the waste that we are producing is higher than ever before, and we all need to be taking steps to lower the amount of waste we create to mitigate further problems with our planet’s overall health and well being in the future. For many people, this will start with donating used clothing and various other textile products.