I need help. My kids have WAY too many clothes. I am in the habit of taking any hand me downs offered and then going through them and picking out what I like, what fits, is in good shape etc... Anything I don't want I pass along to someone else or throw away. My problem is that I keep too much and have a hard time getting rid of anything. When all of the laundry is done there is not enough room in their dressers for their clothes and some really cute things only get worn once or twice because they just have too many choices. Just to give you an idea...my daughter has about 25 sweaters and they're all very very cute...one she got for Christmas (that was expensive!) but has only worn twice, some she has never worn...and the one with a horse on it she has worn about 85 times. Btw...my children are only 2 and 4. So my question is....how many pants, shirts, sweaters etc... does a child actually need? It seems like a silly question but I would really appreciate any thoughts or opinions about this.
We're getting ready to move so my kids are done to two dresser drawers each. That's it. It's been great! No big piles of laundry and no stacks of clean clothes. I'm sort of thinking we may "lose" some clothes when the actual move day comes.
My thoughts on this is they only need as much as I want to wash...........Oh wait, that won't work, they would be running around naked all the time! Seriously, my ds (now 6) has about 6 pairs of pants, a dozen t-shirts, 3 or 4 long sleeved shirts and 2 sweaters. My dd (now 4) has pretty much the same plus 4-6 sundresses. We don't have a big need for many winter clothes so that helps and I do sort through their clothes every few months and get rid of things that are too small, stained or just worn out...........It does look like we have to add some summer (shorts) clothes since they seemed to outgrow all of them over the winter! ****my dd's shoe habit is getting out of control!!
It's not a silly question. My kids GP gave them sooo many clothes that they don't fit in the drawers and closets. I told them no more! I am working on getting rid of them (have already gotten rid of a lot). I'm aiming for a weeks worth, maybe a little more for shirts. We have too many PJ's too. It makes me feel guilty to have so much... very wasteful when someone else can use it that doesn't have enough. I think you are on the right track.
My son has about 20 different sweatshirts at the very least because he's constantly getting filthy enough during the day to need to change his clothes at least 2 times a day if not more. So in our case, they get used. I would love to cut it down to just the few because really I don't think he needs them even if the thinks he needs a walle one and a lightening mcqueen one.
Looks like you are in MA, so your children will need more than mine. But, I would give to charity or hand down to someone else any sweaters and such not getting used. I would not keep more than a week's worth of outfits for any season. My children only have very limited winter clothes because we are in TX. I don't really know exactly how much for summer (actually, fall, spring, and summer) they have..but I think it is about a weeks worth. I would definitely not keep more than 10 days worth. You would not want to go that long without doing laundry anyway.
i agree with all pp, about a weeks worth. with a few nice church clothes is all we need. im even down to my kids having one pair of decent tennis shoes, one junky one, one pair of nice church shoes, 1 flip flop, 1 crock, and snowboots. just a thought, but we have an excellent second hand shop that we take our old clothes to when outgrown, she weeds through, pays me and then i have money for either stuff they need clothes, or i let them pick out some new books. then stuff she doesnt buy i give to good will. she is excellent shop, everything except easter dresses under $5, and sometimes i weed through and find lots of cute t shirts for 25 cents. she has swimming suits for 1.99 and just winter coats for $3, so it has been a life saver to my family.
one weeks worth I got each of my four kids a sweater holder (velcro to the closet rod with six spaces for sweaters), and each space holds an outfit. So they have six outfits, a pair of PJs, a suit or dress for church, and two extra shirts - just in case. We don't have dressers. They each have a plastic drawer under their sweater holder for their underwear and socks. It works out beautifully for me. I will admit however, that my daughter, who is 4, has two sweater holders - she has 10 outfits - no extra shirts though. Hope that helps!
Yes that helps. I think 7-10 outfits seems reasonable. When I think about it, I could probably go at least a month without doing laundry for either one of my kids. geez. So I guess my big project for tomorrow is to figure out how to pair it all down. My son will be easy because its basically all the same (and really doesn't need 15 zip up sweatshirts from Old Navy)...but it will be hard for me to get rid of some of my daughters things because a lot of it is so cute. But I guess I know at this point what she hasn't been wearing all winter. And then I get to do it all over again when the weather gets nicer and I pull out those boxes.
