The Final Piece of the Closet

I have been slowly working my way through organizing my 2 and 4 year old daughters’ room. I organized the toys in their room with a craigslist find.

Next, I organized the closet toys I rotate in every month or so.

With all of the toys organized, I knew it was time to conquer the rest of the closet!

Including the girls clothes.

I find the best time to clean out clothes is on laundry day because then you know for sure which outfits are being worn regularly. It is a perfect time to analyze the lonely items left behind on the rack.

The upper rack is for my younger daughters clothes and the lower rack is for my older daughter.

I quickly went through and trimmed down the hanging clothes. As I looked at each item I was purging, I asked myself if it was donation worthy or if it was ready for the trash?

It’s tempting to haul it all off to Goodwill so that I don’t feel like anything is going to waste. By the time clothing gets passed to my second little one, there are only a few things that are actually donation worthy. And I had to be honest with myself about which items could really be resold.

I also went through each of the closet drawers. With laundry day in full swing, I didn’t have too much to sort through. I keep a permanent donate box in their closet to toss things in as needed which helps keep things pared down to what we use regularly.

When sorting through clothing items here are a few ideas for give away clothes besides a garage sale or charity-

Give away to a friend

I know I might be one of the few who do, but I love any hand me down clothes I get for my girls. If it is not my particular style, they are a perfect set of play clothes for them to get all dirty in. So anyone with older girls out there, send your old clothes my way, I’ll take them and use them!

Family swap meet

In our area there is a family swap meet where you can rent a booth and sell your children’s ware. A quick google search will see if there is one in your area, or you can start one of your own!

Thred up

A website that facilitates children clothing exchange. You can buy a box in your child’s size or you can trade a box.

Sell to a children’s resale store

Store credit is usually given for clothes, but it could be worth it to size up or get clothes for another child

Once I’d packed up the unwanted clothes, it was time to move on to organizing the keepers.

One problem with living in a mild climate is that clothing tends to be worn year-round. There can be a day in February that feels like summertime or you could venture out on a summer evening, and need what we would call our “winter jacket.”

This is great of course because we don’t have two different wardrobes we need to store, however clothes tend to pile up in drawers because you never know when you are going to need a warm sweater or a tank top.

My solution to keep “off-season” clothing close at hand while still keeping it out of the way is to use a hanging laundry type basket.

Not only does the hanging container make use of previously unusable space, (it is kind of tucked back into the corner), it also holds any hand-me-down clothes that the girls almost fit into.

With the clothes sorted and organized, I couldn’t help but add labels to the drawers to match the toy labels.

I am in love with labels, first because they are fun and also because if something is labeled it is so much easier for the item to return to its home. These clothing labels gave me visions dancing in my head of my girls putting away their own laundry (my next goal).

Once the labels were applied, I moved on to tackle the upper shelves.

I mostly rearranged items since each box was somewhat organized to begin with. I did contemplate for a nostalgia filled moment getting rid of the gently used baby clothes I have been saving.

I have 4 canvas boxes dedicated to a the infamous 3rd child that may or may not show up. There is a 3-12 month box, newborn girl, newborn neutral (crossing my fingers) and a box of my nursing clothes. I decided to hang on to them for a little while longer because they are not clutter since they are well organized and I have space for them.

I moved them up higher in the closet and moved down items that will be used more often.

The completed closet has everything in order! And by getting rid of a few items, more storage was freed up.

Let’s be honest. We all know the closet will not always look this put together. It is inevitable, we have to live in our spaces, especially when we have little ones around. The wonderful thing about organization is that when chaos starts to form, it takes only a short amount of time to put everything back in its place!

I would love to hear if anyone else is hanging on to old baby clothes? Those with real seasons, how do you store your off season clothes?