Now, I will preface this post and say that although this is a post about organising baby clothing, this is no indication of any news on my part! lol. I am sharing it simply as a way to organise any clothing, whether it be children's out of season clothes or adult's clothing you can't bear to part with.
As it happens, many of these clothes are favourite things my sister and I enjoyed using with our little ones as babies and are loathe to part with. Some extra special things such as hand knitted items from Great-Grandma in England will be saved to pass down to the next generation but most of it we are saving for my other sister to enjoy at some point in the future.
I have been designated as the one to store it all as we have the room to do so and the large numbers of shopping bags full to the brim were never going to be an effective permanent solution. Much of it was storage at my parents house but they were keen to reclaim back their wardrobes and garage for their own storage! lol. Enter my trusty plastic bins! Good for anything and everything, as any regular reader of my blog will know. :)
The first step is to get all the clothing you want to organise and place it into a large central pile. I set aside some time on a Saturday afternoon while the kids were swimming with Taff, as this whole process can take a while, depending on how many items you have.
I was organising clothing from 0-2 on this occasion so I got four large tubs and sorted it into the following categories: 0-3 Months, 3-6 Months, 6-12 Months, 1-2 Years. Then I went through it all and literally threw all the items into the appropriate tub, depending on the size. I will say that prior to this, I went through everything and only kept the things we really wanted, the rest I put in clothing bins or gave away. This helped to keep the number of items under control.
The next step is to take one tub at a time and empty it out again. Throwing items into the tubs without folding them is great for sorting the clothing into sizes but takes up a lot of room. All you need to do is refold it all into piles of similar items (eg. sleepsuits, onesies, matching sets, etc) and then place it neatly into your boxes. You will fit so much more in by doing it this way.
Finally, label all your plastic tubs with the sizes (or gender, if you prefer to sort it that way) and step back and admire your handiwork! It is now ready for storage in your garage, in a wardrobe or under the stairs, etc.
Hope this helps some of you who may be wrestling with a way to organise all the mounds of clothing in your life :)
