Tips On How To Reuse Your Old Halloween Costumes

If you have old Halloween costumes piling up in a closet in your house, you will love these tips on how to reuse and repurpose them! There are tons of creative ideas, so the sky is the limit! Help your costumes and accessories find a new owner or embrace your creativity and explore some fun DIY projects.

Make Creative Halloween Decorations

Once your Halloween costumes have lived their full life, it may become time to retire them. However, rather than simply throwing the costumes away, why not try making your own fun (and nearly free!) Halloween decorations?

Hang up old masks lining the walls in your house to add the eerie effect of being watched, leave a tattered and bloody dress next to fake weapons, or get even more creative and make your own decorations! You can easily buy blank wreaths at any craft store, then pile on the creepy items, hang up, and enjoy! Feel free to explore sites like Pinterest for ideas, or simply wander around any Halloween section to find your own inspiration.

Initiate a Community Costume Swap

If you have fellow Halloween loving friends, family members, co-workers, or are just looking to create a community event, planning and hosting a costume swap is a fantastic idea! Advertise your event on Facebook or any other social media platform you use, hang up posters around campus or at hotspots in your town, and let people know through word of mouth to get the biggest group possible, or just keep it between you and a few close friends.

Grab your old, used Halloween costumes, clean them up a little, and bring them to the costume swap. Then simply look around for other costumes you’d like! You can make individual trades with people, or just have everyone bring in at least one costume and make sure everyone who wants one leaves with a new option! The more people there are, the more costumes there will be to choose from.

Be sure to indicate in advance that all costumes must be cleaned prior to arrival; you don’t want to be touching dresses with chocolate from trick-or-treating five years ago still melted and smeared on it. Depending on how much work you want to do, you could even gather the costumes in advance and sort them by size to make searching for a costume that much easier. If you aren’t much of an event planner yourself, that’s okay too! You can likely find costume swaps already happening in your area depending on the time of year, so be sure to keep an eye out during the spooky season!

Trade Your Old Halloween Costumes In!

If you are looking to make a few dollars off of your old Halloween costumes, trading them in is a great choice! Some Halloween stores and other clothing resale shops offer cash or in-store credit in exchange for your used items. Many stores will send you a box with free shipping for you to send your ‘like new’ items in. They will evaluate the costume or accessories and send you a gift card in the mail!

Check with your intended store individually to find out their specific guidelines. HalloweenCostumes.com is a good place to start if you aren’t sure where to start when it comes to looking for a place to resell your used Halloween costumes.

Upcycle for Different Events

Not all Halloween costumes need to be worn as a costume; plenty of costumes and accessories can easily be repurposed as fun looks in your daily life! Remove the tail and ears of a sexy cat or devil costume to create a hot look for a night on the town.

Don’t be afraid to cut off sections of your costume to help the look adapt to daily modern life, or to add in some new creative pieces of your own! Since you do not intend on wearing the costume again anyway, this is the perfect opportunity to let those creative juices start flowing and to become the disgner of your own DIY clothing line!

You can use as much or as little of the original Halloween costumes as you would like. Perhaps there is a specific piece of lace or other fabric you want to cut out and add to another outfit, or you want to cut up an entire dress to create a cute crop top. These are totally okay! Feel free to do whatever you want to turn your used costumes into cute, new clothes!

Halloween Hand-Me-Downs

If you have any younger siblings, nieces, nephews, or friends with any of these, giving them your old outfits is the perfect way to reuse those Halloween costumes that you just can’t fit into anymore no matter how hard you try. For adult costumes, try offering them to a friend in need or just post it on Facebook Market or your personal social media accounts asking if anyone would like it. You can also simply donate your old used Halloween Costumes to Goodwill or a local charity. Just make sure all the costumes are clean and intact enough to wear again.

Redesign The Look To Create A Completely New Costume For Yourself

Rather than getting rid of your perfectly fine Halloween costumes just because you have already worn them once can become quite wasteful. Instead, try considering ideas on how to revamp your costume into another one entirely!

Doctors can easily become mad scientists with the addition of a wig or wild hair; angels can turn into brides by swapping out the wings and halo for a veil and bouquet of flowers; leopard costumes can easily be transformed into leopard print pop star outfits; and any fairytale style dress can easily be repurposed with makeup to create a creepy doll effect!

There are tons of small, super simple conversions you can do yourself to create a completely new, fun, and exciting DIY Halloween costumes! Most costumes that were meant to be light and happy originally can be made into instantly terrifying options with the addition of a few strategic rips and tears, some fake blood, and dark eye makeup contrasting with pale skin.

I hope these tips and suggestions helped you find a way to reuse and repurpose your used Halloween costumes. Let me know in the comments below how you decided to revamp your old holiday wardrobe and share this article with your Haloween loving friends!