I walked across the street tonight, lugging a big bag of blessing: hand-me-down skirts and dresses for my girls, when they’re bigger. Skirts and dresses can be hard to come by, and they nearly always cost money, so when my neighbor offered to give me her daughters’ outgrown clothes, I said a thankful, YES, please!. But, even before I walked through the front door of our ever shrinking little house, I was thinking, now WHERE am I going to put these? How do I store an assortment of clothes, in multiple sizes, in any kind of usable way? How do I remember that I have this or that when one of my girls grows into it? So far, I’ve been using those Rubbermaid bins that seemed like such a good idea at the time, each one labeled with the gender and size of the child the clothes are intended for. But they’re miserable because they’re a fixed size. I don’t really want bins for every size from infant through adulthood filling my basement when my oldest child is only five. And I certainly don’t want huge bins that only have one or two skirts lying forlornly at the bottom. I tried to avoid this a couple years back when a friend passed on a mountain of clothes for my son, who was only a baby at the time. I put them all in a bin, ingeniously labeled “boys big clothes.” Uh huh. Guess how often I looked in that bin? Almost never. I had no idea what was in it. I sort of forgot about it, and wound up just buying what I needed when I needed it. Kind of defeats the purpose of having stuff squirreled away.
SO, ladies, what would you do? Have any of you faced something similar with your children’s clothes? Are any of you organizing gurus chomping at the bit with advice?
June 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I can’t say that I’ve had experience storing children’s clothing, but to make more room in suitcases we use Space Bags(https://www.spacebag.com/Default.aspx). They really do work. You should shop around for them though. Ours don’t require using a vacuum cleaner; we just smush them until all the air is out. There are several generic brands that work just as well. I think we got ours at Bed Bath and Beyond with a 20% coupon. Good luck!
June 13th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I am writing this not as an expert by any means, but we have little space (no basement and only a small attic) We have so many “bags of blessing” given to us I can’t make room. How many clothes do we actually need anyway? I am always thankful, but just don’t have any more room. I am expecting our 5th in a couple months and I have way too many bins as it is. I have taken to just writing fall and spring on my bins and not sorting them by size unless it is baby clothes. My oldest is a girl and the rest boys so I know someone will be wearing them next year so maybe that makes it easier. My girl rarely fits into anything the following year so I pass her clothes to my niece. I had to quit keeping clothes for years down the road just for space reasons. What good is it sitting in a bin, taking up space I don’t have when someone out there could be wearing them?
I do have a really creative friend who takes pictures of all the outfits she will put in a particular bin and lists the size and season and posts it somehow in a catalog she keeps in her office. She only numbers her bins and keeps the folder in her office so instead of searching through bins, she searches her catalog and if she needs something out of a bin she knows to look in the one numbered whatever. Great idea if you have the time.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I don’t keep anything that won’t fit within 2 years. God has proven Himself faithful to provide when we need it so I don’t believe in hoarding clothes for years down the road. Saving that many years and trying to remember what is what becomes a burden. I use the rubbermaid bins and they work fine. If I only have a few pieces in a size, I combine it with another size. good luck!
June 13th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I have bins labeled the way you do, but I have a spreadsheet in my binder that logs what I have in the attic, what size, gender and year to go get it as well. So one line may say, “box, girls, 2t-4t, open winter ‘10.” Then throughout the year, or when I notice I’m running out of clothes that fit for the children, I check out my log before buying anything. It has helped me a lot!
June 13th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
You and I must be on the same wavelenth – I’ve just been shopping Craigslist for fall and winter clothes.
I only have one little girl, but so far we’ve been using Avon shipping boxes (a cheaper alternative to totes). Like you, I’ve been putting the too big clothes in a box, and marking outside with “9 month summer clothes”, etc. If I don’t have enough for a full box, then I’ll combine and mark what’s actually in the box on the outside. Then as she starts to outgrow her current size, I pull out the box with the next size and go through it to see what else she’s going to need. Right now she’s needing more shorts than I have – thus a craigslist shopping session was in order.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
I will have to second two thoughts already shared here:
Spacebags
&
only storing one size in advance (though I must acknowledge that the more children you have, the more “one size in advance” collections you will have)
June 13th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I have to agree with Kathy, in that I don’t feel the need to save alot of clothes for the future. An outfit has to be pretty unique for me to keep it for years to come.
God has always provided what we need, when we need it. I happily accept the bag of blessing when it is offered and then pass on what I don’t want to save. Good luck in your organizing!
June 13th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
We are a family of five living in under 900 sq feet with only a small shed for storage – SO we don’t save clothes at all – although I am sure that I would love to be able to do that. Each of my children get two drawers, a small sock drawer and some closet space. If it doesn’t fit there, we “purge”. It seems whenever we have a need the Lord provides. I am all for planning and saving, but I think you said it yourself in your title “Troublesome Treasures” – Too much stuff becomes a burden. When we moved from 2700 square feet to this little place we got rid of so much – it was painful – but our ‘new’ way of life is simpler and we can see more clearly the provision of the Lord.
Blessings as you figure it all out.
Mrs. Santos
June 13th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
When I was pregnant with my firstborn, I bought clothes from second-hand stores and yard sales, and I also acquired some from family and friends.
I wanted to keep track of what I had so when people asked what sizes I needed, I could tell them.
I made a spreadsheet and took a massive inventory of all that I had. At a glance, I could know how many size 0-3 mo. onesies, how many sleepers, how many pants, etc. I had in a particular size.
I could print it out and carry it with me so if I was out and spotted a deal, I could instantly know if we needed more in that size or if we already had enough.
As he grows into bigger sizes, I just shop my closet (in storage bins, boxes, etc.) and grab what he needs.
It takes a little while to take a detailed inventory, but it’s been very helpful!
June 14th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Oh, oh! The method I stumbled across on this site: http://myblessedhome.googlepages.com/clothingstorage has been an absolute LIFESAVER for me. It makes storing and going through our seasonal clothes changes SO much easier and efficient. I love, love, love it! I am not as good as purging as she is, but as far as sorting by child rather than size, and having a “grow into” box for each child… that has worked wonders.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:05 am
I think the problem is that you stored them as “boys big clothes”. If you sort them by sizes it’s much easier to remember that you have a bag of girl’s size x just waiting to be used.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:39 am
I have a daughter and a son and am expecting another daughter after thinking we were ‘done.’ So I had gotten rid of my baby girl clothes. But, as others have said, God will provide and already I have several offers of used clothing from friends. I also pass on my older girl’s clothes, know I may get them back and may not – either way is ok – and only save an outfit with sentimental value. Pay it forward, as a friend put it. For the clothes I get that are too large at the time, I use either just trash bags labeled w/season and size and throw them in my daughter’s closet b/c they are usualy one or two seasons big. However, I have missed getting to use some because the used ones may be smaller than a new item in that size, due to having been washed already.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I don’t know if this will help you, but I recently bought two big clothing racks from a consignment store that was getting rid of them. My plan is to take all of the clothes that don’t fit anyone (but that someone will grow into) and hang them on the rack by sizes. I know you probably don’t have room for free-standing racks, but I wonder if you could put up a second rack in a closet somewhere? You could have your husband install it very high, above your existing rack (since it’s not something that has to be accessible for some time, anyway.) I’ve found it to be very helpful, and a lot easier to manage than the bins.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I wish that I was as organized as Kacie when my kids were little.
We too were blessed by family members with older children and by others with the ‘big black trash bag’ full of clothes that my children might someday/maybe wear. If I kept the clothes I would lose track of them in our attic and find then later when my kids had grown out of them!
Our system became if we were given clothes we would only keep the items that would fit the kids the next clothing season. If they needed the item and it would fit for that next season we kept it…if not…we passed the clothes on to others who could use them.
I learned to become very up front with folks who wanted to give us clothes…if we did not need/want them, I suggested someone who could-
June 14th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I only have 3 so far so I am just starting to feel the “OMG I’m swamped by clothes” feeling.
However, I have a good friend who has six children and not alot of space who gave me a great word of advice about her system.
She says that she realizes that though she may have alot of things, the children really do usually wear the same numbers over and over. So, she makes sure that everyone has simple pieces like “a blue jean, black, and khaki skirt/pants) and then keeps a small amount of tops for each child to rotate. She usually dresses them alike in the same colors in order to keep life simple.
She purges old things every season and usually gets new things every season. She gives away old things and adds whatever new things to replace those.
She also told me that when she gets a bag of clothes she tries to only keep what she REALLY likes. No, “just in case” items. This may end up only being five items out of a huge bag of clothes. But, she just passes the rest on to someone else and (of course) it seems that her children always have what they need.
Her system seems to work well for her and has been working well for me too. May I add that her children always look REALLY good and well polished! I would never know that she is simply rotating the same basic items each season!
June 15th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Well I don’t know how much help this will be, but here is what I did for our family, it might help someone out there.
I never did get much in the way of hand-me-downs from others that we could use because no one else we knew (for a few years anyway) dressed in dresses exclusivly. So, with the exception of a few shirts that they could fit right then we didn’t keep hand-me-downs. But I did figure out a plan to make the clothing budget stretch for us. Here again I can be thankful that all of mine are girls. What I quickly came to realize was that whatever I had to buy for one could seldom be used by the next one down, because the time of year the next one would grow into it was wrong; ie – child 2 didn’t grown into child 1’s sweater until June and by Oct. it was 2in. too short – or, you had a whole pile of short sleeved shirts for child 3 in Nov., but only one longed sleeved one. Talk about frustration. Then, I began making all the girls jumpers. They are really easy to make and can be sewn up quickly. That way it didn’t matter what season it was when the next one grew into it. You put short sleeved shirts under them in the summer and long sleeved ones under in the winter. I used inexpensive calico (prints hide stains better anyway) and then kept a supply of white long and short sleeved shirts on hand – as a child grew out of one I moved it to the back of the closet. The girls, especially the younger three, are close enough in age that usually by the time one was growning out of a dress the next one needed something bigger. Thankfully my girls all love dresses “down to my toes” – they get more time to wear them before they are too short. It isn’t hard to learn to sew jumpers either, it’s one of the first things I learned to sew. Once this system was in place I didn’t have any extra clothing tucked away anywhere except for a few dresses in the back of each closet (which was good since I didn’t have room for anything extra). Each child had two dresser drawers – one for socks, tights, undies, and slips, and one for nightgowns (only 2 or 3) and the long and short sleeved shirts. With so many people in the house I have to do laundry every day anyway just to stay on top of it so they don’t really need a whole lot. As long as everyone had just enough clothes to last a week – in the event of an emergency (like mom being sick) or a trip to grandma’s, we managed just fine.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:20 am
One thing that has helped me is to sort clothes that we are given right away, culling the stained, the immodest, and the “just not our style”. Really cute items that have stains I think I can remove with Oxiclean get pretreated and washed and are kept if the stain disappears. This culling drastically reduced the amount of clothing we were storing.
Another idea is taking handme downs and doing “handme up”. A friend gave us handme downs from her daughter who is several sizes ahead of our daughter. I sorted them as above, and then labeled them and loaned them to a friend with a daughter that they would fit. This friend “stored” them for me, putting the clothes to actual use, and when her daughter outgrew the clothes she returned them to me. By that time, they fit my daughter.