How to Organize Kid’s Clothes Seasonally

Sorting Clothes

Sorting clothes takes the most time and it is where you begin. In my opinion, you must be pretty laser focused to keep this part from trudging on and taking up your entire day.

There are a couple of ways to sort clothes when you are shifting them from season to season, but this is the method that I use.

• Discard Pile
• Donate Pile
• Save Pile

Discard Pile

The discard pile is full of clothes that aren’t worth saving or passing on to someone else. A few reasons that clothing gets put in this pile is that there are holes or damage to the garment.

These items are so worn that they aren’t worth donating, either. Overly faded clothing falls into this category.

Donate Pile

Any clothing that we no longer want, but that is in good shape, goes into the donate pile. If the clothing still has life to it, but we have no need for it, we donate it to someone we know or the local thrift store.

I have four kiddos and my last two wear the same size, so once the little girls are done wearing it, we have no need to keep it anymore. A lot gets donated these days once the two little girls grow out of them.

Save Pile

This pile gets tucked into a storage bin and put away for another season. Out-of-Season clothing that goes in this bin would be clothing that will still fit next season if the child doesn’t grow too much.

Any clothing that can be worn the next year goes into the save pile. Make sure you are picky and only put the best items in this tote.

In addition, all of our oldest daughter’s clothes get put into a “save” storage bin for when the little girls get big enough to wear the clothing.

Organizing Kid’s Clothes

We live in the Midwest, where there are four distinct seasons. Every season requires a little bit different wardrobe.

Because of this, I transition my kids’ closets and clothes each season. I have found a simple way to keep their drawers and closets from overflowing with clothes, but also have things I might need to pull out for them within reach.

1. Keep Clothes for the Next Season Stored in their Bedroom

For last season’s clothes that still fit my kiddo, I put them in a tote and store it in their closet. You could also store it in a flat tote under the bed if closet space isn’t available.

For example, we are leaving summer and heading into fall. I will have each child try on their summer clothes that are still in good condition- shorts, t-shirts, tank tops, etc.. If they fit well, I will put them in a tote to save for the next warm season.

The reason I do this is that the warm weather might come early next year. If I don’t have anything saved from this past summer, my kids won’t have clothes to wear at the beginning of spring/summer before shorts are out in the stores.

Sometimes, my kids have grown so much that there is nothing to pack away. In this case, the clothes get passed on to someone else in the family or donated.

I do like having the next season’s clothes in the child’s bedroom so that it’s easy for me to get to when the seasons shift again.

Items that You might want to store until next season:

• Sweatshirts or Jackets for cooler weather
• Tank tops for summer
• Athletic clothing typically can be worn longer than structured clothes
• Pajamas

Those are all items that are forgiving and can be “stretched” a bit when it comes to sizing. They might be a tad small, but they could still work the next season until you can get around to purchasing new.

2. What do you do with clothes that will be passed on to other kids?

If you have multiple kids, you probably store clothes away for a later kiddo.

My first daughter passes her clothes down to my two little girls. There is a good sized gap in between my oldest and the younger girls, so I store those clothes in a tote in the basement until the younger girls are big enough to fit in them.

These are the only clothes that get stored in the basement. All other “saved” clothes that still fit go in the closet of each child so that they are easy to access.

What is in a Kid’s Closet?

Do your kid’s closets and drawers overwhelm you? Mine used to stress me out as I tried to stuff more clothing into them.

I learned to keep what they have at a minimum, especially because they always get more when their birthdays and Christmas roll around.

If you keep staples in their closets and dressers, and eliminate all of the extras, it will make laundry and tidying so much easier.

Here is a list of what I make sure my kids have in their closets. I don’t allow much excess because it only leads to mountains of laundry and a lot of stuffed drawers.

• 4 Pairs of Jeans- 3 for play and 1 for church
• 7 Tops- these are for daily wear and it’s fine to play in them
• 4 Nice Tops- the nicer tops are saved for church or when we need to look pulled together
• 2 Dresses- for church if your child will wear them, otherwise, just stick with pants
• Pajamas- 3 pairs
• Socks, Underwear, Under Tanks, Under Shorts

Limiting what they have in their rooms makes this entire organizing process run so much more smoothly.

Baby Clothes Storage

My baby is seven at the time I’m writing this post. It has been a bit since I stored baby clothes, but I do remember that time well.

I know baby clothes storage can be overwhelming. What do you keep? What do you get rid of?

In my experience, grandmas love to get baby clothes for their new grandbabies, so keeping a bunch of clothing from child to child can be kept to a minimum.

I always allowed myself one storage tote of clothes for each baby.

Babies grow so quickly, so if you aren’t careful, you’ll have a closet full of totes just for old baby clothes!

Most of my babies lived in sleepers, so I kept the nice, gender neutral sleepers for the next baby. I would keep a few outfits that I loved and the rest was taken out of the house.

We didn’t find out what our babies were until they were born (except for the last baby), so the grandmas would show up when we got home with lots of cute outfits for the new baby.

Truth be told, I simply prefer a clean storage room more than I prefer having oodles of clothes saved from child to child. 😂 You might be different and need to store more clothing for that reason.

Keeping Stored Clothes Organized

The best way to store clothes, in my opinion, is with clear storage totes.

You can see what’s in the totes at a glance and they can be stacked as needed.

I label my totes so that they are easy to grab when it’s time to shift the closets to another season.

This year, I grabbed my oldest daughter’s “size 8” tote from our storage room to get some fall staples for my little girls to wear as the weather cools.

Having the totes labeled makes it so easy to grab what you need as you need it.