From behind the counter: Loosey's first retail experience

I took a small collection of clothes to this spring's Divine Consign sale in Urbana. Divine Consign is a sale that happens once every six months over the weekend, and being the fan of consignment that I am, I decied to check it out as a consignor and a shopper last fall and had some great success.

So this time, I picked up one 4-hour volunteer shift. Being a consignor gives you a pass to a 2-hour pre-sale where you get a first look at everything and a free pass to shop an hour before opening on the last day of the sale when most everything becomes 1/2 off. You earn 65 percent of what you price your items for, but for every 4-hour volunteer shift, you earn an extra 5 percent.

Last fall I made around $140 and sold a lot of my plus sized clothes. This spring, I sent over all of my 8s and mediums, which wasn't too many since I don't have a lot of clothes any more (another budgetary consideration to losing weight besides the expense of a gym, food, etc.).

I was glad I went to the pre-sale because at 5 p.m. when I started my shift a swarm of women showed up ready to shop and things were getting hairy. I was running around putting things on hangers that had fallen off, returning items to the floor and helping people with their hands full put things on hold at the door to purchase or at the try on area. From 5-6:30 p.m. it was a madhouse and by 8 p.m. I swear half of the items in the place were gone.

I also ran into Quigs, which is always a pleasant experience, Quigs' neighbor, a Next Gen parent and an old boss. The four hours were strangely comforting, like back in the day when my job at the non profit required me to put labels on envelopes for an hour. It wasn't at all mentally taxing, but it was highly organizational, which is one of my favorite skills.

The best part about the sale was when a woman I was taking clothes to the register for pulled my pair of Michael Kors jeans off the rack and exclaimed, "These are an awesome find and so cute." I didn't say, "Those were mine!" I just smiled and thought -- cha-ching!