Organization: Children's Clothes

We have visited this topic in my blog before. Click here to read the previous entry. I'd like to expand on this topic a bit. When organizing your children's clothes, do you organize by pants and shirts or do you organize by outfits? Since my children are younger, I usually try to organize by outfits. However, I inevitably end up with a stack of T-shirts and then some jeans leftover. I put those in a separate drawer.

It is a matter of preference. Just wondering how other parents handle their children's clothes?

Also another idea in regards to clothes....as I noticed this week, my children seem to have a lot of clothes! I'm still keeping up with the weekly laundry for the kids' laundry. See my previous post. Meaning I still have one day of the week that I do all of the kids's laundry. I've been doing this since I posted about it and it's been working out really well. Anyway, it seems no matter how much I simplify the children's clothes, it seems the clothes continue to multiply. I was thinking about this earlier this week and decided, at my Mom's suggestion, that I would take an outfit out for each of them and just leave it in a canvas bag in the bag of my van. A "just in case" bag of clothes. Inevitably just as their clothes seem to multiply all on their own, there also seems to be a tendency at times to be in need of an extra pair of clothes! Usually it's a visit to the beach, where we don't plan to go in the water (read: we are not in bathing suits) and the kids end up in the water and soaked! An extra outfit in the van would come in handy at these times. Last week, it was during our visit to the zoo. My son went down the slide at the picnic area and there was a puddle at the bottom! We could have used an extra outfit then too.

Plan ahead, if you can relate to my experiences, just pack an extra outfit for each child in a bag and leave it in the back of the van or car. It won't take up much space.

Simplifying Children's Clothes

It's that time of year again...for changing seasons which means changing clothes. Packing up some of the summer and bringing out some heavier clothing items. This is the time of year, I sort through my children's clothes. How many clothes do our children actually need? They each have about 7-10 outfits, many of those outfits are mix and match. My daughter also has a few skorts that she really likes to wear and several dresses. Of course we also have several sets of pajamas too. She announced she doesn't like jeans! Yikes!!! Jeans go with everything! She loves denium skorts and skirts, but no jeans. Okay, black and taupe pants are still good for mixing and matching.



My son's drawers are sooo deep. He can keep sooo many clothes in there! That was a big clean out. I try to do the same for him 7-10 outfits. Of course I usually end up with an extra "stack" of t-shirts too for both kids. I packed up all of their clothes that no longer fit and send them the boy's pile to my friend and girl's pile to my sister. Whew, I feel organized and simplified!



Handling hand-me-downs. I love hand-me-downs. When I first started receiving them for my son, I was sooo overwhelmed! I received sooo many and kept most of them! Yikes! So here is my strategy.



1. Go through all hand me downs. Pull out the ones that are stained, throw away.

2. Make matches (pants/shorts and shirt) out of what is left. No match then make a pile for Good Will. Most likely you won't use it if there isn't a match.

3. Out of the matching outfits, take out what you don't like. You will not put these clothes on your child if you don't like them and no sense putting them in the drawer if that's the case. Put them in Good Will pile.

4. Out of the remaining matching outfits, pick about 7-10 that you really like to keep for your child.

5. Donate the remaining clothes to Good Will, to a friend or give to a church collecting clothes.