Organizing Kids' Clothes

If you're anything like me, organizing children's clothing that is sitting on the back burner awaiting its next foray into the closet (the hand-me-downers), is a big green monster that sits on your shoulder always chewing on the back of your brain.  In essence, it's a menace and although we should be grateful that we have this problem, (i.e. grateful that we can afford to have enough clothes to supply our growing children), the problem is still there, all over the floors of our storage rooms, piling up in mean little piles in the backs of our children's closets, under their beds and wherever else we can find room for a stack of clothes that are either grown-out of, or soon to be grown-in to. 

Like many of you folks, I went waaaaaay overboard in buying my sweet first-born girl-child ... clothing.  As in...I bought enough to clothe every girl-child born that day in Utah for a couple of years.  I've toned it down over the years as I've realized that sometimes outfits get worn once and then that was a waste of $20.  When the 2nd girl-child came along I guess I was grateful that I had so much to choose from.  She still got the shaft though because I absolutely refused to buy anything new. Ok, that's a flat lie but I didn't buy much.

Fast forward a few years later and I have successfully managed for the past 7 years to sanely manage all of those clothes that have been ceaselessly turning over.  I still have some piles here and there but I know that every few months I'll pull them all together and set them to order.  Here's what it looks like. Super easy too.

I have a couple bins in my storage room. One for clothing grown out of.  This is where all those random piles end up.  When the bin is full, I organize. There's also a bin for grown-out of shoes.

I picked up Space Bags, bless their little souls.  I pack them full, suck out the air and stack 'em up tight.  I usually need 2-3 bags per size but I label them so I know how many bags I'm looking for when I go in search of the next size up.  

The size I have just on these two shelves are 4T to 7 plus all of my baby quilts and some winter things for me and The Marshmallow. It all fits on these two shelves which is so great! I love it!  

Today, I finally was able to go through all of these clothes and I pulled everything that is too small for either of my girls  and put it in the spare room to figure out what to do with it. Most likely give it to D.I. unless someone out there could use birth to 12 months (ya, that's all that's here folks. I told you I over-did it). 

Anyway, I have loved how organized all of these clothes are and how easy it is to find what I need. It literally only takes a minute or two to find all of the clothes for a next size. And you can re-use the bags.  Nice!