The first step is admitting you have a problem...

Targeted Obsession/ Boutique Clothing

Well Dressed Wolf

It's 8:50 on a Thursday night and the alarm on my phone goes off. At first, I'm thrown, but then I get excited remembering what that alarm means... It's time to cart Well Dressed Wolf! Okay... rewind to early October when I had no idea what that meant.

A sweet friend of mine who always dresses her daughter so perfectly texted me a picture of a dress, saying that Ellington needed it. She was right. Ell did need it. And that friends, was my first hit of the drug known to underground mommies all over Facebook as BST.

BST stands for Buy/ Sell/ Trade. There is an amazing world of boutique clothing pages hidden within Facebook (I say hidden because the pages are private and your membership has to be approved... and can just as easily be withdrawn!) dedicated just to buying, selling, and trading particular brands of children's (mainly girls) clothing. This is how it works...

Boutiques set release days and times for limited quantities of one or a few items of their clothing line. At that time, mommies all over flock to their computers, refreshing every few seconds to see when the new items will load. It then becomes a competition to see who can click, type, and "copy/ paste" into check-out screens the fastest. The best brands sell out within seconds! Yes. I said SECONDS! It's crazy, but genius!

Prices on these items vary, but you can typically find things anywhere between $34-$68 on average. When I began the BST world, $68 (before tax and shipping) sounded pretty steep. Let's face it, I'm a girl who loves a bargain and mid $70s isn't a bargain on a dress that a baby will grow out of in a few months! But the more I became acquainted with this mystical world, the more I realized that most items were re-selling on the BST pages for just as much, if not more (to WAY more) than what was initially paid! I was astounded... and then the "bargain shopper" in me started chomping at the bit! I wanted to see if I could buy something and sell it for a profit. I could. I DID! And it was addictive. I've since come down from my high and realized that what goes-around-comes-around (even in the BST world) and I've stopped trying to cart simply to see if I can sell it for a profit.

The cool thing about BST is all transactions are completed through PayPal. Therefore, once you put up your initial investment, when you begin selling (and things DO sell!) you begin a continuous cycle with that investment. That is, you begin the cycle IF you're disciplined enough to not add extra funds to your PayPal account. Currently, mommas that have been around the BST world longer than I have are complaining about the BST market, saying it's in a decline. Maybe I've gotten lucky with my carting, but I've been able to at least get my money back off of every boutique item I've bought and attempted to sell.

But for me, making my money back isn't the best thing about the BST world. And it's not the fact that my mailbox is super exciting either. Amazingly enough, it's not even the wonderful pictures I get take of my baby in all of her beautiful clothes (although, that's a VERY close second)... The best part is the relationships I've built with mommies all over the world. The BST boards aren't just for buying/ selling/ or trading; they're for sharing successes, stresses, prayer requests, and praises as well. Moms "pay it forward" all the time. They look out for each other. And as we help and support one another, our daughters are looking damn cute!