Children's Clothing

I can’t point you to the other thread – I don’t remember it – but I can tell you what I do. I try to keep 6-7 complete outfits (so enough for a week) per child per season (so a week’s worth of summer weather clothes and a week’s worth of winter weather clothes), plus 2-3 sweaters/sweatshirts for layering, plus 2 nicer “church” outfits. (And of course, socks, jammies, underwear, swimwear, coats…) I end up doing laundry just about every other day so this is enough for us that no one ever runs out, even if a child goes through 2 sets of clothes in a day (because of accidents, spills, etc). I may be on the minimalist side, however, we live overseas and move a lot and I can only haul around so much stuff. HTH some!

Jen

So many ways to do this! We have 5 regular outfits and 1-2 church outfits per child in their dresser, with a similar amount in storage for other seasons. We do laundry by bedroom, so each bedroom’s laundry is done every 3rd day. They never run out of clean clothes unless they don’t do their laundry day, even when they need an extra outfit change getting dirty some days. I do keep more out for a messy baby. If you only do laundry once a week you will need more outfits per child so they don’t run out.

For storage, one thing I have learned is to keep 2-3 extra of items that get the hardest wear and tear. At my house that is boys pants. I have five boys, with the last four right in a row. Pants get destroyed here by the time a few boys have used them, so it is not uncommon to need to pull out an extra pair per child before the winter season is over.

Basically, we label a tub with a particular size and the word Girl or Boy. In the infant sizes there is just one tub holding a mix of boy and girl clothes as those are so little they fit. Coats go in the size tub too if it is not winter. When you reach older kids (my oldest is 11) the clothes do take up some extra space so two tubs in a size may be needed to fit 6 outfits per season. We live in an area with distinct seasons. We need cold weather, hot weather, and cool/warm weather. Right now we have tubs for the following sizes:

0-3 months

3-6 months

6-9 months

12 months

24 months/2T

3T

4T

5T

6/6x

7/8

9/10

12/14

Mommy maternity and non-maternity

Shoes

When we switch seasons I go through the clothing the kids are done with and keep what is still in nice condition, get rid of things with holes, and make a list of items to keep an eye out for at thrift stores for the next child in that season. That makes it easy to drop into Goodwill in spring and summer when they are having a sale on winter clothes and fill in the gaps we’ll need for the next winter. Same thing for summer, I shop for it in winter if we have items that need replaced.

Hope that gives you a jump start on brainstorming what works for you!

I must have missed that thread!  🙁   Anyway, We just went through the kids clothes and I told them that they could keep 2 weeks worth of t-shirts, longsleeve shirts, 5 or 6 goodies, and 2 dress outfits. I figure if we have to go on vacation or something happens to me then two weeks should do it. I do laundry daily but not all colors get washed daily.  

  As for socks we have a sock basket.  When these are unmatchable then we have a sock upheavel and they become dust rags and shop rags.

   As for childrens clothes. When they were younger I only kept the best hand-me-downs. Now that my children are different sizes I only buy a season or size ahead.  I found that some of the items we had were not being worn so I desided to watch for clothing closer to their size.  My oldest son is much bigger then my younger son. He doesn’t fit into his hand-me-down pants anymore.  So, I desided to only try saving a few that I know are skinnier. They are 1 year apart but they are totally different.  My younger son needs those pants with the buttons on the inside.  My daughter also needs them.  She is to short for her pants size.  So, I usually pick up a few peices of clothes in the next size up and shop at garage sales and thrift shops when she gets close to growing out of those that fit now. 

  A wise mom once told me what she learned about saving clothing.  If it has stains do you really want to save it for the next child? Do you want someone to see your baby in stained up clothing? When you pull out that camera to take their “firsts”  do you want to see that stain forever in their baby pictures?”  I agree. We do have some stained up clothes sometimes but it seems to be my son’s favorite shirt or our work clothes.  Not the babies outfits.  She also said, ” If you save all of those baby clothes eventually they will be out of style because something else will come out that will be better.  Besides, the elastic usually wears out and you have a droopy shirt. ect…”  So, with that advice I have not kept a whole lot of extras on hand. As a matter of fact when my grandbaby was born I didn’t have hardly anything to pass down to my daughter.  If she would have told me 1 week earlier I could have given them to her. 🙂  That is ok though because she had some really nice stuff that we picked out for that first baby!