Organizing Kids Clothes

Hi All,

When you have kids you accumulate a lot of clothes.  They grow like weeds and in a matter of a few years you have on hand about six full wardrobes of different sizes.  It makes frugal sense to keep the clothes.  But a few children later, and different genders, what do ya do with them?

This is what I did.

First, you need to assess what you have.  Gather all your clothes.

Create piles with different clothing in each.  For example, all the PJ's in one, tops in another, bottoms in another, you get the idea.

After that's been sorted, gather just one of the piles.  Now sort the different sizes.  Here I've sorted my sons tops.  Newborn to 3 months, 6-9 months, 12 months, Sz 2 tee's, Sz 2 long sleeves and sweaters, etc.

Now sort through each of these mini piles.  Ask your self  "How many (shirts, tees, sweaters) in this size do I really need?",  "Why did I pack this away dirty?".

For the next step you will need some bags. This is what I used:

 I bought them from Dollartree.  The over-sized plastic zip bags are much less expensive than the brand name ones. I also bought these travel bags.  They're quite large and once everything is in them you roll the bag and the air comes out the end, so they take up less room.  I tended to use the travel bags for pants and dresses (anything big, or that I had lots of). Everything else fit either in the over-sized bags, or large Zip bags.

The next step is you "file" the clothes you decide to keep in whatever sized plastic zip bag they require.

 LABEL.  I made tabs for the left-hand corner of the bag with some tape.

And there you have it.  Now you can see what you have in each category of clothing.  It took me a long time to do all of this since we have girl clothes from NB to size 7 and boy clothes from NB to size 4. But well worth it.

I also have a bin for clothes that my boy has yet to grow into and my oldest girl to grow into.  In these bins I just tossed whatever I get into them.  They're not sorted but I don't have too much so it's no big deal to sort when the time comes that they need something from them.

If my kids get into one of these bins and start trying on different things, there's no need to fret anymore ('cause it's happened before), I can just grab the garment, see what size it is and put it in it's appropriate sized bag.

All of these bins are kept in the baby room closet.  Jackets that they will wear when the winter season arrives are hung in there too.

Cue happy dance.

Blessings,

Christina