How to Store "Too Small" Clothes!
/Happy Tuesday tribe!
If there is anything I could spend HOURS on in a day, besides simply being a mama, it is organizing storage throughout my entire house! This month has been filled with new storage solutions in our closets, pantry, garage, toy room, and laundry room that I cannot wait to share about! But today I’m gonna share about my system in putting away “too small” clothes!
Now, you all know that I want to have all the babies! So from day one I’ve known that I would keep clothes that had been worn and grown out of by each baby, until we’re done having kids! But children grow like weeds! So as they slowly shift from one size to the next, I will go through and curate their drawers to only house the clothing that fits them currently. This saves me the mess of searching sizes when it’s time to get dressed, or having a stash of too small clothes in the corner of their rooms or closets! (Because that would make my OCD brain go nuts!) So, here we go! :]
First, I have bought batches of bins several different times! I try to get them as similar as I can, so there is some kind of uniformity to our storage! I purposely bought a different color for baby girl clothes than what I use for the boys, so that it would be easy to identify when they’re up in our overhead storage in the garage! I love bins that are visible from the outside so that if I’m looking for anything in particular I can find the batch of clothing it’s in! It looks cleaner and more orderly when things are uniform!
As I curate, I go through their clothes slowly! When I’ve decided that it’s time to shift from one size to the next, I will start to set aside the clothes that are too small as I fold them after being washed! I keep a pile separate and then go through the clothes still in the drawers or closet and add them together. I will keep up to 3 months in the same bin, until they get to the 2T size! I like to keep seasons together if I can, but my tiny humans grow so slowly at first, that they usually will get both warm and cool weather clothes in all sizes! So I start with a 0-3 month bin, and anything from newborn to 3-6 mo will go in that bin! I put the 3-6 months in the same bin, because the size “starts” at 3 months. So when I get those clothes out again, I want them to come out with the smaller size rather than the bigger and already being too small! Then a 6-9 month bin, 12-18 month bin and then a 24mo-2T bin! They are labeled on each one by gender, and size! Ex. “BOY 0-3mo”
In each bin, I stack in piles: tops, bottoms, jammies, and extras (outer layers, swim, shoes, etc.). I fold everything so that they are stacked well together within the bin! This makes it so that everything fits well and it easily found if looking for something in particular when the clothes are put away! As I pull the sizes out again, they usually stay pretty fresh and are able to just be put away! If I feel the need to wash some clothes as I go through and put them away, I will! I absolutely LOVE storing these clothes, to be pulled out later. There is nothing better than tiny human clothes! :D
