Have you ever found the perfect toy on your local Used.ca site, but hesitated to buy it because you weren’t sure if was weathered looking? Have you ever wanted to sell your kids’ old toys and spent hours scraping off the stickers they plastered onto every available surface to get into a sellable condition? Well, we have a hack (or four) for that.

What you’ll need:

• Hair conditioner

These beloved dolls begin to show the signs of play quickly; their hair seems to get tangled and ratty almost as soon as your kids have pulled them from the box. With this toy hack, however, you can transform them from looking “well loved” to “good as new” in no time at all and collect a pretty penny for them. It’s simple:

• Apply hair conditioner and leave in for 10 minutes
• Let dry upside down for extra volume

If you want to sell Barbies your kids have grown out of, a good trick (once you’ve cleaned up their clothes and fixed their hair-do) is to stage the photos to make Barbie and her friends look like they’re having fun.

What you’ll need:

• Two pieces of Velcro

Velcro is clearly one of the best things to happen to the fashion industry since snaps replaced buttons, but as soon as it gets gunked up, it stops working and makes the item look older than it actually is! This hack gives a second life to anything with Velcro on it. Simply swipe the scratchy side of another piece of Velcro in each direction (like wool makers used to do with sheep fleece).Check out your local Used.ca site to see what items you can give a new life to!

Fun fact: Velcro is a Canadian invention (just like Used.ca)

3. Crayons

What you’ll need:

• Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
• Gloves
• Water

Instead of sending plastic used toys off to the landfill give them a facelift and sell them on your local Used.ca site! You can tackle any scuffs or crayon marks with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser! A good tip for these erasers is to cut them into smaller pieces so you don’t need to use the whole thing. Be careful with these erasers- they may be Magic, but they are also toxic. Use gloves and make sure you rinse toys well before handing them back to kids. 

4. Stickers

I remember begging my mom to buy me stickers from the dollar store and me promising I wouldn’t stick them on anything but my notebooks. Of course that promise only lasted until I got home and realized how much better my toys would look with stickers all over them. My mom would have LOVED this hack back when we were kids.

What you’ll need:

• Goo Gone
• Stickers or Sharpie pens

If the sticker was a part of the original toy (like the Barbie sticker on the scooter) you can replace it with a new one (we got a pack of official Barbie brand stickers from Michaels for $1.49 on clearance), add a Sharpie doodle (if you are feeling artistic) or just leave it blank.

Now that you’ve transformed your used items you can post them for sale on your local Used.ca site.