By Alex Iwashyna, blogger at Late Enough
Whenever my sister comes into town, I decide to do stupid things. I think: The only reason I don’t bring my children to nice restaurants or on long shopping trips is because I’m by myself!
I’m wrong.
During one particular Aunt Katie trip, I decide to sell all my maternity clothing to eMommie.com with the ENTIRE FAMILY. I have some fancy maternity wear and figured that I’d be rich in no time. Plus, my husband is annoyed with my two boxes of clothing labeled: BUT WHAT IF A RANDOM FRIEND GETS PREGNANT AND CAN’T AFFORD PANTS?
On the eMommie website, they ask that your clothing be ironed. So I take my hand, place it flat on the offending shirt and smooth the wrinkles out firmly. I bag everything up. And after send Farah fifteen emails detailing when I’ll be stopping by the office, I arrive early with my sister, son, daughter and three bags of fantastic maternity clothes, which I will never ever ever ever ever ever wear again thanks to modern technology and a fierce commitment to leave pregnancy to the next set of cankles-sporting and exhausted preggo friends.
Instead of having someone call me tomorrow with my enormous payout, I decide to wait while they go through my baby-growing wardrobe because I like flirting with disaster. And my husband. But he wasn’t there so I am stuck destroying the office complex. And as my children run down the office hallways singing LALALALALALA and bouncing off the walls like we are in The Matrix, I look to my sister as though her presence alone should get my children to listen more and run less.
Ten apologies (by ME) later, I’m handed an invoice and a bag and a half of clothing back.
I am DEEPLY offended and demand to know why I have rejects! I looked these clothes over! People would be LUCKY to get my hip maternity outfits!
She points out a stain here and a sash missing there. {sigh} I’ve clearly trained my eye to OVERLOOK mess, stains and dirty diapers whenever we are within fifteen minutes of my husband arriving home. It’s my survival mechanism for parenting. Plus, I happen to think breast milk gives clothing character, but eMommie doesn’t have a clothing department for character. Big mistake. Probably.
From the clothing they kept, I made about $28. And they offered to give my rejects to charity. But me and my pride carried them home.
My husband cried when I arrived home with half my clothing, and I huffed around with poop-stained pants and check.
Until I realized that had I ironed my clothing, the entire experience including drive-time would’ve been about 75 minutes. And had I left eMommie with my rejects, it would’ve cut out another 25 minutes round-trip to the Goodwill. (The stains ARE small.)
So I made $28 for about an hour of work INCLUDING TRAVEL TIME. Freelancers everywhere are jealous.
I also proved that you pregnant ladies are getting REALLY high quality stuff. Much to my missing button disappointment.
Disclaimer: I received nothing more than my normal paycheck for this review. Not even a shirt to hide my I-had-two-babies-belly.
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Alex Iwashyna blogs at Late Enough about life, parenting, marriage, zombies, culture, religion and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. She also facilitates a local moms group called Nobody Told Me! (because OBVIOUSLY) and runs a collaborative review site called This Blogger Makes Fun of Stuff (because SHE DOES). Feel free to find her on Facebook or @L8enough on the Twitter. But don’t call. She uses her phone to manage those accounts while avoiding real human interaction.
