There is just something about baby clothes, isn’t there? People can’t resist buying them! Between hand-me-downs and the new clothes we were given at baby showers, I think my baby had more cute outfits filling her closet and dresser drawers by the time she was born than I did! It’s all for the better considering how quickly babies dirty and outgrow their wardrobes, but it can be a daunting task to get all those baby clothes organized. Here’s a five-step system to make it a little easier.
1. Take pictures. While it is an incredible blessing to head home with a load of gifts from a baby shower, it can also be overwhelming at the time. It always disappoints me when I pull out an adorable outfit from my baby’s closet to dress her in and can’t remember who gave it to me. While the lists we kept at the showers for thank-you note purposes were helpful, they were never quite descriptive enough. I suggest taking pictures of each outfit as you put them away and saving them with a note of who they came from.
2. Sort the clothes. Baby shower guests often have the foresight to gift outfits that will fit the baby later than the newborn stage, so I brought home outfits of all different sizes. I sorted the outfits by size. Then, I sorted the newborn and 0-3 month clothes into categories: sleepwear, bodysuits, and pants, which were assigned to drawers and shelves, and full outfits and dresses, which I hung in the closet.
3. Wash the smaller clothes. I’d been taught the importance of washing baby clothes in a gentle detergent before the first use to remove any chemicals from manufacturing or residue from people handling them before they got to me. This in mind, I washed and dried the newborn and 0-3 month outfits that I knew she would wear immediately before putting them away. Fabric softener and dryer sheets are also a no-no when it comes to baby laundry, but dryer balls make a good alternative.
4. Leave the tags on. Although you can make an educated guess, there is really no way to know in which season your baby will fit in which size clothing. People who bought higher sizes may have under- or over-estimated your baby’s growth rate. For that reason, it’s important to leave the tags on the clothes you’re choosing not to use immediately – especially the bigger ones. In fact, you can also leave out some of the newborn clothes until your baby is born because there are a good number of babies who only fit in the newborn size for a short time, if at all.
5. Store the extra clothes. I put together a couple of boxes of the bigger clothes and also hung some in a special section of the baby’s closet. Since you’re going to eventually have to store the clothes your baby outgrows in each size range, you could alternatively sort them all and start their respective bins now. Shortly before the baby seems like she’s going to outgrow the current size, I go through all the new clothes so that I can wash them. It’s so fun to re-discover the baby’s wardrobe! Sometimes, I find that I have some brand-new clothes of that size that are just not made for the time of year when she’s ready for them. If you find yourself in the same situation, or if you end up with lots of new newborn clothes your baby never wore, you could return these clothes to the store, donate them, give them as gifts to other new moms, or even try your hand at selling them.
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