Friendly Friday continues with an awesome post from Sarah Lynn from YYZ Bambina. I absolutely love reading her blog and was so happy that she was able to contribute to my Friendly Friday series. Enjoy and happy last long weekend of summer 🙂
Organizing Your Baby’s Clothes
By Sarah Lynn of YYZ Bambina Blog
Babies grow fast. Faster than I’d ever imagined until I saw it with my own eyes.
My daughter will sometimes wear an outfit once and cannot fit in it days later. It makes me sad to think of all the outfits she outgrew while they were simply hanging in the closet.
In an attempt to get her into everything in her super cute, adorable (and more fashionable than Mommy’s) wardrobe, I have created a system. My childless friends are pretty impressed, but I don’t know how it will fare with fellow moms. Feel free to pick up any tricks that may work for you, and ignore all those that won’t.
(My system works best for those of us who are lucky enough to have people in our lives constantly buying clothes sizes too big for our babies. Saying my Mom loves to shop for baby clothes on sale is the understatement of the year. And the fact that you can collect Airmiles at The Children’s Place? Whoa…she has my daughter clothed until 2015 at the very least.)
Step 1. Organize baby’s closet from left to right. On the left put smaller sizes that grow into the bigger sizes on the right. For simplicity’s sake, I keep all her fancy dresses (some hand-smocked by my Great Grandmother years ago for me) on the very left side. I keep all of her too-big-for-now PJs on the very right (in the same smallest-to-biggest order). Other than the dresses, nothing is in the closet that she currently wears. OK, except for her laundry basket, which sits on the floor and holds her dirty clothes.  (Side note: most children’s stores will let you keep the hangers if you ask. It’s cheaper than going out and buying children’s hangers that are often too big for baby clothes.)
Step 2. Everything that currently fits should be in the dresser. Thankfully, baby clothes aren’t that big. All of my daughter’s onesies, t-shirts, shorts and capris fit in the top drawer of her dresser (we have her changing pad on top of said dresser, which makes it a perfect proximity to her clothes). I make sure all the shorts are together, onesies, etc. Outfits that are shirts/shorts/skirts combos, I fold and keep together. I also have two Ziploc bags – one is filled with socks, the other is filled with hair accessories. The second drawer is for PJs. The third and final drawer is for sweaters/outerwear/changing pad covers. My partner Chris usually keeps to my sorting. If not, he ends up in the aforementioned laundry basket. J
Step 3. Organize once a month (or when needed). Like clockwork, I do this around her monthversary, usually after a visit to her pediatrician (or my Mom – who works at a doctor’s office) and therefore I know her current weight. I make a pile of the clothes she no longer fits into (often fighting back tears as favourites leave the drawer) and ceremoniously go through her closet to wash and introduce the next size clothes into her wardrobe.
Step 4. Pack “too small” clothes into Rubbermaid containers. We use ones that fit underneath the bed. It’s great because it keeps the cat from hiding there, and it saves space. The most important part of this step is to remember to LABEL the container by season and size. The second most important step is to remember to put a dryer sheet in the box with the clothes. That way they won’t smell musty when you unpack them for your next baby, or someone else’s.
Step 5. Repeat steps one through four, for the rest of the child’s life. Or until they are a teenager and all of their clothes will just end up on the floor, thus creating their own way to organize (or so they will try to tell you).
I am by no means an organizational consultant, but I am a certified neat freak. I hope these tips will help your babe get into all his or her clothing – or at least have their wardrobe more organized!
Sarah Lynn is currently on maternity leave with her gorgeous, goofy baby girl. You can follow her adventures in Mommyhood at YYZ Bambina Blog and on Twitter @yyzbambina.
im expecting my first son in november and evryone one around me has a boy of there own so as you can amagine in have gotten ALOT of hand me downs, after going through them and keeping all the best condition clothes and giving back or donating the rest i still have enough to clothe 3 boys from new to 2 years of age so an added organization i have done (because i have completed step 1-4) is putting all the cutest onsies and such on the top of each pile in the drawers, id hate to think of wasting a day on the plain white or blue outfit when i have a few really cute puma baseball 3 set outfits that he will grow out of in a week.lol but having this much clothing might be a god send if that cute outfit only lasts an hour and then he spits up or a leaky diaper makes it nessisary to change him for the 10th time that day. after all i doubt ill have the time to be doing a load of laundry every other day.
Ummm, can you come to my house to help me organize! I still am not from baby #1, let alone #2!!
These are great tips! I find myself dreading the drawer organization I have to do for fall when I put the summer stuff away. This will make it easier 🙂
I’m totally going to use your ideas! Right now our dresser is full of blankets, and we never use them, so your method makes a lot of sense. One question for you though… what do you do with the containers when you run out of room under the bed?
I hope Sarah Lynn doesn’t mind me answering! I actually buy diapers in those huge boxes in bulk so I save them and fill them with the outgrown clothes. We have space in our basement and pretty much one room has become a storage space for baby’s outgrown clothes! Good luck.