Organising Kids: Sorting and Storing Baby & Kids Clothes
Since Immy was a baby wearing those adorable teeny, tiny onesies that she was too big for way too soon, I have used this  system for storing the clothes she grows out of in the hope that one day she would have a sibling to hand them down to.
Its a simple system, certainly not rocket science but as AJ seems to also have this heartbreaking habit of growing up too fast (how on earth can she be one already?)  I have been very thankful  for it. So here’s what I do;
In Immy’s wardrobe (and now also AJ’s) I have a large plastic tub labelled with the size of clothing she is growing out of. It’s just written straight on the box with a whiteboard marker (though permanent marker on masking tape works just as well), nothing fancy. Any time an item of clothing is ready to be purged from Immy’s wardrobe or chest of drawers it goes straight into the box.
Once the box is full I do a final check that everything is clean, folded and the correct size for the box. I usually do a quick sort into tops, pants, dresses, skirts and undergarments, and sort the clothes so that one side of the box is for spring/summer clothes and the other for autumn/winter, anything that I don’t intend to keep gets taken out to be donated to charity. Then the lid goes on ready for the day when her little sister will be big enough to wear them!
Do you have a system for storing the clothes your children have grown out of?
thank you so helpful to organize and keep things in order. I use this for my granddaughters things now and it works wonderful too for when we consign her stuff. hank you again
I basically do the same thing but as space is a bit of an issue I put the clothes (which they have a lot of as they receive a lot of hand me downs from their cousins) into vacuum sealed bags with some acid free tissue paper to stop them from going yellow and a sticker with the size.
I used to do similar but now that my younger daughter is rapidly catching my older in height, I find that when I do their seasonal try-on of stuff, anything that dd1 can no longer wear goes straight into dd2’s drawers!
I do have a big plastic box of stuff that dd1 is waiting to grow into. We are very lucky to receive hand-me-downs from 3 families 🙂
I used to store a lot of stuff in the loft but it was out of sight and out of mind so, over time, I’ve sorted and donated all of that and now when dd2 grows out of stuff it goes straight out of the door so to speak. I have a box for the stuff that goes to 2 little girls who are younger than her and a bag for stuff that I am donating – both the school and the music centre take part in “Fill the Bag” collections where they earn money based on the weight of bags handed in so it is in an easy way to help them raise funds.
There’s going to be a very cool one year old rocking that dress!
That sounds like a great system. My system is far more hit and miss. I guess because I have quite big gaps – 4+ years between #1 & #2 and then almost another 4 years between 2 & 3 – I have ended up with lots of boxes. And then I forget to open them before the next kids has outgrown them. Also because I am not well enough organised and have kept too much probably.
But, now that my two girls (now 3 and almost 7) are soon going to be sharing a room, and also now that my son and elder daughter are old enough that there won’t be so many clothes handed down between them (she’s starting to care more about not looking like a boy!), I might need to get organised, and this sounds like a good system, thanks 🙂
Thank you soo much for sharing such useful information of kids apparels arrangement. My baby’s wardrobe is a disaster. I think this might help me taking care and arranging my baby’s apparels.