apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The only problem I've had with storing and labelling kids clothes is that my two boys are born in totally opposite Canadian seasons. One July, one February, and another to arrive in May. I can sort them by size or season, but either way I can really only use half the stuff in the pile.

I got some of those space bags and was then able to fit everything in each size in one bin.

Another trick I did for the second kid was when winter came along, rather than getting him a bunch of new shirts, I just went out and bought a selection of long sleeved white, black, navy, and some onesies, to wear under his brothers summer shirts that were the right size but wrong season.

Agreed - a pack of long-sleeved onesies did wonders when I realized most of our handmedowns that would fit the baby during the winter were shortsleeved.

Also, for the cheap yet using disposable diapers among us, I find diaper boxes are ideal for storing too-large or too-small clothes.

ooo....filing that long sleeved onesie thing away. Good idea!



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I did something similar but it didn't help much. First, my baby was big and grew much faster than average. Second, my husband and I decided that onsies were terrible, terrible things. So hard to put on! Annoying to take off! Give me a couple of snap teas any day! At least for the first three months.

Finally, and I know this silly, but my baby was much, much cuter than the clothes I had purchased. Seriously, I would look at the selection and think, really I bought that for YOU?And then I had to find cuter stuff...

I wholeheartedly agree with the long sleeved onesies, and tights for little girls-- they can turn almost anything seasonally appropriate.
One caution against using diaper boxes or other cardboard- many of my daughter's baby clothes yellowed significantly where they touched the cardboard, perhaps from the acid in the paper. Maybe wrapping things in acid-free tissue first would have prevented this.

The over the head onesies are horrible for wee little ones who are still so bendy, and much worse, have those poo-splosions. No one want to peel those over someones head, much less have it pulled over their own head!
For those early days the ones with the snaps up the front and the part that comes from the back and snaps are much easier, and more pleasant.

I agree with the other posters that onesies are much too difficult to put on or take off of newborns. We used the side snap/ kimono shirts, like the ones that the hospital dresses baby in at birth. Those were so much easier to dress our little on in those first two months. And, as for storing bigger sizes, we used a separate section of her closet and as she moved up in size, we would circulate the bigger clothes into the "active" section of the closet. Pretty simple and it kept everything in view so we wouldn't forget to dress her in anything.

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About what CamillaP said on the yellowing - I'm not sure it's the paper so much as other things...we inherited clothes from my niece that were one year old, packed in plastic, and they had yellow stains. They were packed clean, but 'invisible' old breastmilk & spitup stains aged into yellow spots from what I could tell by a lot of googling. Oxiclean worked the best but still didn't take them all the way out, it was a bummer. Now I'm thinking I should soak all the pack-away clothes in Oxiclean before their last wash to avoid that problem maybe. Anybody an authority on the yellowing tips?

I used a variety of stain releasers. The best was to soak the whites or nearly whites in clorox 2 for an hour. Then washed and rinsed several times. There was also another solution of arm & hammer baking soda and something else but cannot remember it.