Talking about Kid Clutter this week.
Are you struggling with kid clothing? It’s not surprising that parents find themselves run over with children’s clothing now that we buy five times as much clothing as we did the in the 1980s.The problem isn’t just with buying new either. As anyone that has accepted bags of free hand-me-downs knows there is so much out there at low or no-cost, it’s tempting just to take it all with the thought that it’s better to have too much that was free then be stuck having to buy something new.
Despite having three boys and loving hand-me-downs we’ve been able to keep our kid clothing to a reasonable amount with a few rules in place.
1.) We try to have mix and match wardrobes. This reduces one-off outfits and items that only work as a set. Right now the guidelines I’m working towards are:
- bright tops
- no navy tops
- no gray bottoms *exception for sweatpants
If my kid’s clothing was all based around these rules we would have no ‘Canadian Tuxedo’ days where the baby is dressed in gray head to toe or the three year old is wearing navy everything. Unfortunately we got a lot of sweet clothing as Christmas gifts that don’t adhere to this color system. It was great quality so for now, bring on the head to toe navy!
2.) We only store the best pieces for hand-me-downs. Right now I have two plastic boxes of that are 75% full with seasonal clothing and items for our younger two to wear. There is a three year and three size gap between our oldest and second born and there is almost no sizing gap between our 1 year old and 3 year old. Those gaps mean that right now things come off the second born and go right into the ‘baby’s’ wardrobe. Win for no storage!
3.) We know that relatives will give clothing gifts. Our boys all have winter birthdays so knowing that, and that we also get a lot of clothing gifts at Christmas, I don’t have to keep every last piece of winter weight clothing for the next boy – just our favorite pieces. Now that we are living in a hot summer location I’ll be more inclined to keep summer clothing to hand down because we don’t get it as gifts.
4.) We have smaller wardrobes. The older two have 4-5 bottoms and then roughly 10 tops of varying weights. The baby has a bit more because he often requires a mid-day outfit change. My barometer for how much we have is, can I still find stuff without folding any of it and can we make it a week without doing laundry.
5.) We try to wear outfits at least twice before washing. Not a possibility with the baby right now but the older two can re-wear outfits 2-3 times. This is a huge help for cutting down on laundry.
My situation is pretty easy because a) my kids are young and b) they have NO INTEREST in what they wear. Really, almost no interest. Our middle child is sometimes picky about what he wears but I’ve forced the issue a couple of times and now the item he didn’t want to wear is a favorite. I can see that he will be more work when he is older.
This tale of the easy life is no help to anyone that is struggling with a five year-old demanding multiple outfit changes a day or teenagers that refuse to wear anything you have purchased for them.
So, friends, we all need your help. Parents of older children or those that are picky dressers, how do you manage keeping the closet full of just what they’ll wear? Do you put a limit on how much clothing they can have? Do you remove items seasonally and as they outgrow them? Do you let them make all the choices?
The best part of blogging is the conversation in the comments. That’s where I learn new strategies and get previews of things to come in my household. So please, tell us your secrets. And if you are struggling with this problem in your own house, share the problem. I am hopeful a few parents of older children have developed some strategies we can all learn from.
For anyone curious about what our clothing storage looks like with three kids: we have two IKEA Algot stand alone basket systems. Each boy has two of the small baskets and then we have one large basket that holds some of the baby’s next size clothing and has some spare linen. We will have to expand this system as they get older simply because their clothing will be bigger.
P.S. Too much clothing for babies and toddlers is still a parent driven problem. Thank people for gifts and then donate anything you won’t use. Return those 0-3 month size jeans for store credit and just keep what you’ll use over five to seven days.
I am working on my children’s closets right now (boy 4, girl 2) we are contemplating another child in the next year. I’m battling wether to keep the good clothes the current children have outgrown for the chance of another child, or to get rid and buy all new clothes. Thoughts?
I just finished paring down my 18 month old’s clothing collection and sold over 50 surplus items! Ridiculous! At one point, i counted 25 pairs of pants! I share kids clothes with my sister, as my nephew is the size between my boys, but people still give us more clothes. We have so much, and it’s such a chore to get rid of it. I know they mean well, but I wish the distant aunties would stop sending more random, uneeded clothes every Christmas.
I wrote a post on building my toddler’s thrifted capsule wardrobe here: http://thriftshopchic.com/how-to-build-a-kids-capsule-wardrobe/
I stuck with two or three colors (made myself say no to a lot of cute thrift store finds) and a couple neutrals and just look the other way when my spouse, who is color blind, puts her in one of the few combos that don’t go together. Also, I find jeans are great for integrating those cute, but outside-the-color-scheme tops we get for gifts. Luckily the red/gold/black pants my mom bought her for Christmas go with another gifted top.
She helps put away her own clothes each night and can pick one shirt or pants out of the two we occasionally give her as options; I clean out the unused stuff when spouse/mom aren’t looking as they’ll both bemoan how cute something is even if the kiddo never wore it and our storage locker is busting at the seams 🙂
I’m working on paring down, and I agree that with young child it is mostly a parent-led problem. My girls are two years apart, so I am doing my best to keep only the very best clothes as hand-me-downs. I am looking forward to school uniforms next year to further minimize!
I have a very opinionated 8-year-old boy and a slightly less opinionated 5-year-old girl. I do let my kids choose what we buy, keep, and what they wear, but I choose the quantity. I refuse to waste my time arguing with them or controlling their choices, so I control the environment 🙂 I only keep the pieces that they actually wear, and I don’t buy or keep things that they don’t like. We live in a very casual place, so they usually don’t own any “dress-up” clothes. I purchase those on the rare occasions that we actually need them. We also wear outfits more than once before we wash (not only makes laundry more manageable, but the clothes last longer – washing is tough on them!), and I also keep about 10 days worth of clothing on hand. Even though I can’t do much handing down now that my daughter is more into “girly” styles, I only buy durable, quality clothes that last. I hate shopping, and can’t stand to buy something cute, only to have it look awful after 1 or 2 washes.
That’s a nice balance: letting them choose items while you choose quantity.
My six-year-old son couldn’t care less about what he wears, but he is extremely clean and hates to wear anything twice, even pajamas that he put on after a bath and only wore to sleep in! I’m constantly catching him putting his pajamas and once-worn jeans in the hamper, though he knows I want him to wear them at least twice. Ugh, too much laundry!
As a mother of six with a wide age span, I’ll chime in on how to encourage the older set.
With my son, it was quite easy because he’s not that interested in clothing other than as a purely functional thing. I was able to appeal to his practical nature by stressing the desirability of fewer clothes of a similar/complementary color scheme.
With one teen daughter, I introduced Jennifer L. Scott’s “Madame Chic” books. I didn’t push, merely suggested. Happily, my daughter embraced the idea that the minimalist wardrobe can mean stylish and beautiful. She’s become quite good at editing her possessions. And looking fabulous whilst doing it.
For those kids old enough to have an opinion, but too young to make wise fashion choices? Observe your children. I’m willing to bet that, no matter how much clothing they have, they wear the same favorites over and over. I’ve been able to talk mine into relinquishing items that take up space (yet are rarely, if ever, worn) by highlighting what they do wear.
Good luck, everyone!
My kids aren’t much older than yours (almost 7, 4, and 18 months), but my older two have definite strong opinions about what they’ll wear and my oldest is in a school that requires uniforms, so our situation is a bit different.
With my oldest, we try to keep enough for her to wear one full school week and we only keep the things that she’ll wear (which has sadly meant getting rid of pretty much all the nice pants her grandma bought). Then she has a smaller wardrobe for non-school days. I tried for a while to have her change when she got home from school to preserve the uniform clothes, but I’ve figured out its not worth it. It dirties more clothes, the uniforms are still getting worn long enough that they’re dirty, and it means having to keep more regular clothes.
My second we work on the system that if it gets worn, she loves it. When clothes are put away they go on the left side, so things on the right get discarded. My youngest is still completely oblivious, so I just pare his down as I get annoyed with trying to fit a shirt over his massive head.
As for storage, the girls share a closet. I installed a shower rod at their level and all their shirts, pants, skirts, and dresses get hung. Then they have a hanging organizer on the higher bar that holds their undies, socks, tights, and pjs. The younger one just has a small shallow storage box that houses all his clothes folded KonMari style. It sits on top of my own dresser.
I have a 4 yr old and a 1 yr old daughter and the problem I have run into is that they were born in opposite seasons. So even though they are the same gender I have a hard time using all of the hand me downs. I like to keep 7 outfits per child in the closet/dresser. More when they are really little and go through 3 outfits a day 😀. I have no patience with shirts, skirts, dresses, etc… until they are old enough for it to actually stay in place instead of riding up. Until then onesies and sleepers are the way to go. Right now my youngest is wearing exclusively sleepers because they have the footies and I don’t have to worry about her feet getting cold. So 7 sleepers is simple enough, because I really don’t care about making her look “cute” and she doesn’t either. My eldest is unfortunately one of those that is extremely opinionated about what she wears. And she likes to hoard her clothes and keep them folded just so, but not actually wear them. So she instead wears the same “matching” outfit (as in completely red) for days. If it is still clean I try to just go with the flow, and I am very thankful that she does at least want things to be neat. I don’t let her decide what I buy for her, though I keep her preferences in mind. The past couple of times I have bought clothes for her I have stuck to dresses with shorts or leggings/tights depending on the season. She prefers dresses because they are girly and I like that they have a longer fit time. I had problems with her shirts getting too short before she was too big for them because she is somewhat of a bean pole. I think the biggest key to easy matching is to stick to neutral bottoms.
Oh, and clearly we didn’t have our “Enough” rule in place across the board BEFORE we had seven kids…😳😁
Seven kids ages 22-7 and all I can say is it is a constant process. (6 boys, 1 she) Early on I figured out that I had to decide what was “Enough” and then stick to it. A certain number of Tshirts, jeans, shorts, dress shirts, pants, socks and underwear, even down to belts and shoes. If we get more in, something else has to go.
This has helped in several ways:
*since we have always had more limited space, it keeps the closets and drawers manageable.
* it makes getting ready easier b/c things are interchangeable and there aren’t too many choices.
*it keeps shopping down to a minimum
*laundry doesn’t get totally out of hand
*when a toddler would go crazy and dump out all the drawers, it wasn’t as much to clean up!
My younger boys and preteens have a say in what I buy, so I make sure they will wear what they have. That insures even the picky ones have choices.
But, with adult sons who have been in and out with college it gets trickier. One is a minimalist across the board so it’s pretty easy. The other…has major shopping issues. He never met a sale he didn’t like. Clothes. Are. Everywhere. So I made him do a couple of things. Turn all the hangers around and after he wore it turn the hanger back around the other way. After a month he could see what he wasn’t wearing. And I convinced him to at least bag it up and see what he missed. So far nothing! I also told him he couldn’t have more than could fit in his drawer, closet or in the dirty clothes. When he realized how much extra beyond that he had (even trying to push down the pile of dirties to put more on) he bagged up more. Still working on the shoes.
Now we are trying to curb the buying! He plans to move out and get an apartment, but we’ve shown him how with his shopping habit he can afford pretty much a cardboard box – which doesn”t have good closets.
Bonus to his habits – my next few sons have a lot of great hand me downs!
It’s a process!! 🙂
Two comments:
1) I “Kon Mari” the hand-me downs (not outerwear) with my kids: “will you wear this?” and if they say “NO!” and if it’s not a super awesome special you need to look nice item then it’s donated to our school district’s clothing closet.
2) my older child is exploring the gender spectrum, i.e. is interested in wearing clothing not “typical” of their gender. We fully support this and it’s added a new challenge to clothing management and procurement. If any of you hand down clothes to family / friends, I encourage you to maybe think about mixing it up a little for both genders to give everyone some freedom to explore who they are!
This is fantastic advice, Karin. Thank you!
It’s taken me 7 years to use up all the hand me downs and to realize that it is almost more econimical to buy than to recieve bag loads of miss matched items. I also do a colour themed thing – trousers (which are also worn for school, shorts in the summer) are all black or navy blue. (The pink and purple sweat pants were starting to look babyish on a 7yo and the light grey just get dirty too quickly.) Tops are blues, greens, purples and some pink. We tend to stick to t-shirts int he summer and long sleaved t-shirts in the winter. We’re not into fussy items that need ironing. Atm she doesn’t like dresses or skirts but we have two of each for occasions that need it. And two sweatshirts for school, two hoody jackets for home, and a smart cardigan in black to go with the best clothes. We also have two coats – one for school and one more smart.
She has six pairs of trousers, in the summer she’ll have six pairs of shorts, but I have to admit that the pile of t-shirts is ridiculously large. I am reluctant to cull then though as one false move with the ketchup and a t-shirt is ruined. At this age I’m ok with up to 15 t-shits in the pile.
I have two teenage girls: 16 and 14. When they were younger, they had far less clothes, since they outgrow them so quickly when young. Although girls usually have more clothes anyway, simply because there are so many variations of outfits. Thankfully they can be bought cheap when they are young. I now have an almost 6ft size 0 child to buy clothes for – that is never going to be cheap. Even GAP don’t do long jeans in a 24 or 25inch.
The trick to only having clothes that are worn is to ensure the child is onboard with them at the point of purchase. This happened when mine were around 9 I think, based on style and colour/fit preference, not brand. I would far rather spend 2 or even 3 times the amount of money on an item that is worn regularly than buy a cheap one that is never worn. It’s trickier with girls. A lot more choice, but often it’s too wide/figure hugging, too girly or tarty (eg neither of mine ever liked glitter or pink on tops), or too flimsy to the point of almost being see through (hello supermarkets!)
Mine have their own room and a wall of wardrobe/cupboards that house everything from clothes to sports kit to school books and Lego. It’s all well organised. Laundry is done every day; clothes management isn’t an issue at all here.
I love this post! My almost 2yr old daughter has 8 long sleeve tops and 8 short sleeve. We cloth diaper and she has a pair each of wool pants, shorts and a skirt that double as diaper covers. I do laundry once a week. She rarely makes it through all her tops but sometimes it happens as we spend a lot of time outside and she can get pretty dirty, lol! Its nice to have only her favorite tops and she can request the one she wants from the ones that are clean.
I have two girls (ages 11 an 9) and have kept their wardrobes minimal for several years now. Until recently, neither has ever had a dresser and that has helped tremendously. I used the hanging cube storage system for pants, t-shirts and pajamas and we would hang the rest. I used foldable boxes from Ikea for socks and underwear.
My oldest daughter does have a small dresser now, and that enabled us to get rid of our storage system for off season clothes. For the most part I just notice what they wear and we get rid of the rest. I also operate from a buy as we need mindset, otherwise we end up with too much.
Even with the minimalist wardrobe, they both still have favorite outfits that get worn over and over and over. I don’t hold on to many outgrown items to hand down from my oldest to my youngest – they have very different styles and tastes.
As my kids wear school uniform/scouts uniform/football kit during the week, I don’t have too much of a headache when it comes to their clothing. Other than the uniforms, they have three pairs of trousers, three shorts, 5 T-shirts, 2 long sleeves, a hoodie and warm fleece each for the week-ends and holidays/travel. All their clothes are in their Flexa drawers. My 12 year-old uses the Konmari method to fold his clothes to fit nicely in his drawers. 🙂
As a mother of older kids (boys 18 and 15, girl 11), I have to say that clothing and storage becomes harder because they get bigger! The boys are bigger than me/my husband. If they were interested in carefully sorting and folding and hanging, then I guess it would be ok, but guess what… They’re not. They both operate something of a ‘floordrobe’. (Don’t judge me… wait till you have teens…) They vary as to how much they care about what they wear, so I feel I’ve had to encourage one to take more of an interest, and try to discourage another from being too captivated by designer sports labels.
I’m in the UK, and I have to say, it’s really helpful that schools have a uniform. Allows you to be more minimalist, because they wear the same thing so much of the time.
Sorry, you asked for tips, and I can’t say I have many! If you have sporty kids, steel yourself for a large amount of sports wear and equipment as they get older.
My daughter, who will turn 3 next April, is very picky about her clothing. Her wardrobe was full of clothes she never wears. Some of it hand me down from her sister and others bought by me or family members. I have removed most of the clothes she clearly dislikes and I have stopped buying items that I like but she will probably not like as much, and I now try to get her things that she likes and I don’t hate. She is very much into glitter and would wear a glittery cardigan every day if she could. Everything with Frozen pictures on it is also very in, but I like it less. So I have bought a couple of glittery things and decided not to bring in more Frozen stuff, as nothing can really compete with that and I don’t like that sort of clothes. I have also asked her grandmas to consult me (or her) before buying her clothes. Also less volume helps, and clean clothes go back into the closet after use, and that has reduced the laundry a lot. One more thing, she likes to wear clothes that resemble my clothes, so I can get her to wear some items by pointing out that they are similar to something I have.
I have been lucky enough to outfit our 3 daughters (ages 9, 6, and 6) almost entirely through hand-me-downs. All my girls are very picky about clothes but I have learned a few things so far. They are:
1) if it is sitting in their dresser and they never wear it, I pull it out and donate it. I will do this when they aren’t around and they have never once missed anything.
2) Never go through the hand me down bags with the girls first. I always sort through everything myself beforehand and pull out anything I find objectionable. (Clothes w/ commercial tie-ins, too short skirts or dresses, etc…) Then I let them choose what they like.
3) Everything must fit in the dresser comfortably. They can’t accept new things if they don’t get rid of other things first.
4) No clothes that require hanging. A dress can be folded neatly. My twins are responsible for putting their laundry away and they won’t realistically put things on hangers. Neither will I.
5) My 9 y.o. Loves clothes and changing her outfits which was generating a lot of laundry. Now she is responsible for doing her own laundry and she is generating a whole lot less!
Brilliant tips!! Thank you. 🙂
My kids definitely do not have minimalist wardrobes but we do ok. The older two care a lot about their clothing, the middle kid is adorable and so much fun to dress, and I love to dress the twins matching. Either way I’m probably going to go through it again and find more stuff now thanks to this.
Your kids’ wardrobe situation is inspiring. Our 5 kids (ages 13, 11, 9, 5 & 3) all share closets but we still have a bit more than we need. Today I’m going through clothes and each kid will be keeping about 10 outfits, plus uniforms. I don’t store much between kids, about one cube between the girls’ sizes and one cube between the boys’ sizes. I used to have lots of bins in the basement but managing them was a headache, so the hand-me-downs now fit on the top closet shelf. I love it when it is easy to put clothes away because there is plenty of space to do so. My older two kids have uniforms for school and we’ve been blessed with lots of hand-me-down shirts. I’ll keep them all until they wear out since they are not cheaply replaceable with the school logo embroidery. For years we’ve used and Ikea Antonius stack of 6 drawers in the laundry so clothes go directly from drying to folded to their individual basket in the laundry room, but as their clothes have gotten bigger is not not working that well. So today that is going away, each kid is getting a laundry basket and will be assigned a day to wash, dry, fold and put away their laundry so the tiny laundry room is not a storage room for clothing. At least that is the hope. I’ll be helping the young ones get their chore accomplished, but they’ll be involved. At this point we just encourage re-wearing jeans or church clothes they just have on for a few hours. I agree with the comment above, girls wardrobes are more complicated with less mixing and matching.
I do accept hand-me-downs from other people, but go through them the day we get them and only keep the favorites. Between hand-me-downs, thrift shopping for higher-end brands, and select online purchases for a quality item for their birthdays, I don’t shop retail for kids clothing.
I think another thing to take into account is their personalities and activities. One of my kids will not wear sweaters. One kid would wear sports clothes and shorts all year if I let him (totally our athletic one), my little girl wants to change clothes 4 times a day. I try to ensure everyone looks presentable but I’m not willing to fight with them about it continually. I only really exercise veto power on Sunday mornings and for family pictures. 🙂
Kids’ clothes! Quite a topic. We don’t have picky dressers yet, so I can’t chime in on that one. I remember one mom of older kids said that she purchased the clothes, but let her picky dresser choose the outfits she wore from moms’ selections. So mom was the ultimate gatekeeper but didn’t pick the battle with how her daughter combined clothes and how many times a day she changed clothes.
My kids will happily wear the same thing over and over (ahem- https://yeoldcollegetry.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/kids-clothes/) so we don’t have the multiple-clothes-changes problem either. I think I would have to just make my child pull his own weight, if he wanted to change clothes all the time. If he is willing to put the clothes back in his baskets (we use baskets too!)- who cares if he changes a million times a day? If he dirties all of them up and creates more laundry for me, he will need to learn to do laundry or cut back on changing his clothes.
(All this is said with the “how hard can it be?” shrug of a mom who doesn’t actually deal with this problem, so take all of that with a grain of salt…)
Katherine – I copied your basket/open box storage idea for our front hall closet. Works really well. There is a box for shoes, one for jackets and another for bags/hats/etc. The kids can now put all their own stuff away. Thanks for sharing the ideas 🙂
I don’t enough floor space to do the same for their clothes (plus the baby would pull it all out right now!) but the older two are starting to put their own clothes away in the baskets. Not sure when they will/if ever learn to Kon Mari fold 🙂
I’d be really interested to know how easy the Ikea drawer unit is to use? I’ve tried the small drawer units before and they just don’t slide in and out easily enough for the kids to really get in the hang of using it. My daughter has a great Ikea dresser but the drawers are half empty most of the time! What a space hog for her small room! (Maybe that should be the big furniture item we get rid of 😉
My son has the hanging shelf unit for his closet and although the shelves are a little bowed it works out really well as long as we keep on top of clearing out the clothes he’s outgrown or doesn’t use every couple months. If it gets too full all the clothes come flying out when he tries to take one shirt out! Thanks for these posts!!
Our IKEA Algot system slides out really easily. But it’s really only my older son – age 6 – that gets his own clothes out. The 3 year old sometimes hunts around for stuff too but not regularly. The baby loves the drawers, unfortunately, and likes to pull everything out of them.
I read another comment somewhere that a parent was using the IKEA hanging shelf in a closet for clothes. Sounds brilliant. Do you just stuff things in or fold? I love the Kon Mari fold but not sure how long it will be before my kids can do it themselves + will not undo all my work!
Thanks for your reply! I fold the clothes and the kids are in charge of putting away. For the most part they go in the shelves folded but if he’s in a rush it all gets stuffed in. We know when its time to do laundry when the shelves are almost bare! Its a good visual reminder for the kids too.
I’m not sure I get the problem with all grey or navy… Those are neutral colours, and then the focus is on the baby not the design on their clothes, right? But then I don’t love the exploded rainbow look particularly.
For our 4 year old, we keep the wardrobe to a limited palette of 3 colours based on her favourite colours and family giving gifts are aware of this since she is picky and simply won’t wear stuff she doesn’t like. Some things have a pattern, but everything can mix and match and it never looks too crazy because there are at most 3 colours (of which 2 are neutrals anyway) and most importantly, everything gets worn now that we understand her preferences. I think she’d wear the same favourite outfit every day if she could. When she wants to deviate from the colour scheme, we do it in a one-off item like rain boots or mittens. Otherwise we have found the favourite colour always gets chosen instead. This took time to evolve as she started out with a thrift store influenced rainbow of colours but the favourites have been consistent for a couple years now.
For our 1 year old, it’s a mix of hand-me-downs, thrift store, and presents and there’s a pretty wide variety of colours, so we usually choose to add neutrals that will wash well with everyone else’s clothes. We will probably limit colours when he is old enough to express a preference for a favourite because it’s made laundry and mix-and-match so much easier for our older one.
Currently, they share a dresser (IKEA 5-drawer Tarva) and they each have 2 drawers plus sharing the shallow top drawer for hairbrushes, accessories, etc.
For both kids we initially had too much due to generous gifts but also because we used to do a lot of outfit changes due to tons of spit up so we really needed more in the early minths and it took us awhile to realise we could scale down to only need 1 (maybe 2 depending on mealtimes) outfit per day.
For us, the limited palette and limited drawer space has made having a minimal kids wardrobe pretty straightforward.
I should clarify that for our 4 year old we choose the clothing to buy (considering known preferences and sometimes asking for colour choice) but she gets herself dressed. We found she was too capricious if allowed to choose what to buy and would claim to like something but then never wear it. At the moment I am better at judging what will actually get worn, though I do ask her to tell me what makes things her favourites (e.g. comfort, features like pockets or sleeve lengrh, colour, etc)
I have been working to simplify kids’ clothes for a long time. Currently, there are 3 of us moms who are rotating hand-me-downs (our kids are “stacked” in age/size) and then the Mom with the youngest girl and Mom with the youngest boy send the clothes to another Mom.
With all those kids and personalities, clothing can get complicated. I can only speak for my household, but, I try to keep about 5-7 everyday outfits per kid, 5 pajamas, and 4 weather appropriate church outfits.
When it’s time for The Great Clothing Swap, my oldest (8) is very involved. I allow her to choose the clothing that stays in rotation, encouraging her to make outfits so there isn’t a super cute shirt that just sits in a drawer. If there is something that she needs in order to use an item of clothing we make a note so we can watch for it on sale. Her most difficult struggle is saying goodbye to clothing that she can still squeeze into but really shouldn’t.
With my little girl (3), I keep 5 pairs of jeans, 5 everyday dresses, and 5 long and 5 short sleeved shirts. I currently “hide” non-weather appropriate stuff so it doesn’t get pulled out and tossed on the floor.
My little boys (3&4) I keep 5-7 pairs of jeans and 5-7 weather appropriate shirts. In the summer I keep neutral colored shorts,(denim,navy, khaki) and short sleeved shirts.
I also bought a couple packages of all white socks for the girls and all black for the boys.
I have a 4 year old who absolutely cares what she wears and has strong opinions! Our strategy has been almost the opposite, but works great for us. We’ve eliminated mix and match and gone to only complete outfits. We have 8-10 complete outfits per season/size and hang them in her closet with all needed pieces. Each morning, she chooses the “next in line” outfit and wears it. 2 small plastic drawers below the hanging clothes hold socks, underclothes, pajamas and a couple of cardigans for layering when the weather is especially cold. A couple of special items stay at the back of the closet to be pulled out for dressy occasions. Now, instead of unworn and mis-matched items (and daily battles over what to wear) we have just what we need and I can always see if I’m letting laundry go too long by the nearly empty closet bar. I also know exactly what we need (e.g. 1 pair of black leggings) and can easily seek that out vs. browsing fb sale groups and buying something simply because it’s “cute.”
I’ve tried to implement these sorts of rules for my two girls, 5 and 3, but girl clothes and hand me downs are just not as mix and match as boys clothes. They each have a 3-drawer clear plastic thing, a basket for their socks undies and tights, and dresses and sweaters and blouses hung up. Which isn’t a hug footprint in their room, since it all fits in their small closet, but its more than they need and hard for them to pick out stuff.
For my older daughter I’ve managed to get some semblance of order by avoiding light or bright coloured pants, and she tends to have practical concerns like tags, but the younger one adores every item in the giveaway bag. Especially if it’s pink.