What to Do With Clothes You Declutter, Beyond the Trash

A closet clean-out usually ends with a few full bags and one question: where should all of this go? EPA's waste data shows why the answer matters. Most discarded clothing in the United States still ends up in landfills, and a simple sorting system at home can keep more of it in use.

1. How much clothing gets thrown away

EPA tracks textiles as part of municipal solid waste, the everyday trash from homes and businesses. The most recent figures on those EPA pages are for 2018:

• Americans generated about 17 million tons of textile waste, 5.8 percent of all municipal solid waste.
• The main source of that textile waste is discarded clothing. EPA lists smaller sources too, including furniture, carpets, footwear, and sheets and towels.
• Only 14.7 percent of textiles were recycled, about 2.5 million tons.
• About 3.2 million tons were burned with energy recovery.
• Landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles, about two-thirds of the total.

The long-term trend is steep. EPA's data shows textile waste generation rose from about 1.76 million tons in 1960 to about 17.03 million tons in 2018, nearly ten times as much.

EPA's product-specific data breaks out the categories most relevant to a home declutter:

One detail in EPA's notes is encouraging: reuse is not counted in these generation figures. Clothes that are donated and worn again never enter the waste totals until they are eventually discarded. Every item that gets a second owner delays its arrival in that 11.3 million tons.

2. A four-bag sorting system

Set out four bags or boxes before you start pulling clothes from the closet:

1. Keep. Items you wear and that fit. Put them back right away so the pile shrinks as you go.

2. Donate or sell. Clean items in wearable condition: no stains, tears, or broken zippers. These have the best chance at reuse, which EPA's data treats as staying out of the waste stream entirely.

3. Textile recycling. Items too worn to wear, such as stained shirts, torn jeans, single socks, and threadbare towels. Ask your local solid waste agency whether textile collection is available near you and what it accepts.

4. Repurpose at home. EPA notes that reused garments and wiper rags eventually enter the waste stream, which means rags are part of the reuse chain. Cut old cotton T-shirts and towels into cleaning cloths for the garage or for jobs you would not use a good towel on.

Only what is left after these four bags should go in the trash.

3. Do not forget the linen closet

EPA counts towels, sheets, and pillowcases separately, at about 1.5 million tons generated in 2018. When you declutter clothes, the linen closet is the natural next stop:

• Decide how many sets of sheets and towels your household actually rotates through, and keep that many.
• Donate extra sets in good condition.
• Turn worn towels into rags.
• Send the rest to textile recycling where available.

4. Make donations easy to follow through on

A bag of donations that sits in a car trunk for a month does not help anyone. A few habits help it actually leave the house:

• Wash or check items before bagging them, so they are ready to go.
• Keep a donation bin in the closet year-round, so outgrown or unworn items have somewhere to go between big clean-outs.
• Schedule the drop-off on your calendar the same week you declutter.

5. Shoes count too

EPA groups clothing and footwear together in its product data, describing the category as made mostly of textiles, rubber, and leather, with some plastics. That makes the shoe rack part of the same project. Apply the same four bags: wearable pairs to donate, worn-out pairs to whatever textile or shoe collection your area offers, and only the rest to the trash.

6. Buy less to declutter less

A one-in, one-out rule (one item leaves whenever a new one arrives) keeps the total steady and makes future clean-outs smaller.

7. Key takeaways

• EPA estimates 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018, mostly discarded clothing, with only 14.7 percent recycled and 11.3 million tons landfilled.
• Clothing and footwear alone made up 13 million tons, with a 13 percent recycling rate.
• Reuse is not counted as waste in EPA's figures, so donating wearable clothes keeps them out of the waste stream.
• Sort decluttered clothes into keep, donate, textile recycling, and rags, so only true trash goes in the bin.
• Include the linen closet: towels, sheets, and pillowcases are their own 1.5 million ton category.