Storing Baby Clothes

As the school year approaches I begin to think about school clothes. Bryce has recently just outgrown his newborn clothes. It got me thinking, everyone has an adorable baby/child that is growing like a weed. How does one go about sorting and storing outgrown clothes?

I have a system I have used as all 3 kids outgrow their clothes to prepare for either more children, to share with friends, or prepare to sell. I also use this as I phase out my maternity, postpartum, and even seasonal clothing.

I keep a laundry basket in my room (also where I fold laundry). I toss all clothes in the wash (either when they wear it for the last time or I am going through drawers and know it doesn’t fit). When the outgrown clothes come out of the laundry I toss them into the hamper to “deal with” when I have more time, but also gets them out of the closet.

Once I am ready to deal with the clothes, I sort them into 2 categories: keep for future babies and get rid of (sell/donate).

Get Rid of:

Things go out of style by the time you have another baby, you have too many of one thing, you got it as a gift/lot and it isn’t your style, or the likelihood of having a baby for the same holiday are slim. These are the items I get rid of. I photograph those items. I then ask friends/family if they are interested in them. What is left I post to local buy sell trade sites. If they remain on that page for a while, I then collect them and donate.

Keep:

For items I absolutely love and will use with future kids, I store them. I buy bins when they are on sale/cheap and I put them in the bins with labels shown on the outside what is in there. I have found that I am able to fit 2 sizes (ex: 0-3 and 3-6 month) in one bin, a size and a label on each side. Bigger sizes (or when they are in the same size for more than one season) may take a whole bin (2T up usually). I store these in the bin in a boy pile and a girl pile.

Packer, Badger, Brewers (for us Wisconsin folk) are things that can be use by all genders and all sizes/seasons so I keep all those items in their own bin so I can pull for either gender.

Holidays are kept in their own bin so I can either 1) sell when it is before that season and more likely to sell it or 2) if either gender can wear it, I can pull it from the holiday vs searching for it in a size bin.

**If you are limited on space, look into buying vacuum sealed bags for each size and vacuuming them down into much smaller piles to store more compact**

I hope this system helps you get organized and helps you to find a way to narrow it down and take care of those too small clothes in an organized way.