Search:

Amber’s Home and Office Organizing Blog index

Keepin’ Up With the Clothes

You know the saying, “Keeping up with the Jones’”. Well most moms feel the same way about keeping up with kids’ clothes. They grow so fast and a good share of time and money went into purchasing those clothes. There’s no wonder why we’d like to save the clothes for the next child. It just makes sense. Here are some ideas for how to make that process easier.

•    If clothes won’t be passed down to younger siblings, place a bag or box in your child’s closet, room, or under the bed. As they outgrow clothes, toss the clothes right into the donation collector. Once full, take the donations to a charity and repeat the process.

•    If clothes will be passed down to younger siblings, place a Rubbermaid container somewhere in their room and start to fill it. Or if there’s no room for a container in purge out their clothes twice a year by grabbing a Rubbermaid container sitting in basement or attic storage and return it to storage of course after filling it.

•    Remember these two key items as you save clothes for sibling. 1. LABEL the container with the size (not age of the child) of the clothes. Each child will reach a certain size at a different age so it’s better to stick with organizing by size. 2. LIMIT how many containers you fill. Try to fill only per year for that size(s)! Yes, I know that may seem impossible, but one container of clothes for that size will be plenty. Chances are some clothes might be outdated by the time the younger sibling gets to wearing them and you might end up shopping for some new clothes for the younger sibling instead giving her or him only hand me downs.
   
•    To have another baby or not to? That is the question. Of course that’s a common scenario when you’re just not sure if you will or will not have another baby. So make it easy on yourself by getting the baby clothes organized now. Designate three bins- one for boy clothes, girl clothes, and one for gender neutral. You’ll be all set when you do have a baby. And if you find out the baby gender you’ll know what to keep versus donate.

•    Some parents do the sorting and purging in the laundry room as they fold clothes and do wash. Three benefits arise from doing your purging and storing there. 1. You have more room to spread out and store bins of clothes 2. The clothes are clean when you donate them. 3. You reduce your work load because you won’t be folding or putting away clothes that don’t fit.

•    The final and most important tip is to maintain the system. That’s always the most important step of all. We, parents and organizers, can put a lot of systems with good intentions in place but if the systems aren’t maintained they’re bound to fail. So take some time to think through which system or set up would be best for your family and that would work with your time. Then start taking the steps to implement it.

*Screen Name:
Question or comment:
This is a private message or question
	* denotes required field