How to Organize Your Children’s Clothes to Save Time & Stress
*This is a guest post written by Kristi Bahgat
How often have you stopped and stared into your child’s closet, or down into their drawers only to find a disorganized mess? Nothing is folded, clothing is mixed together in the same drawer with no rhyme or reason, and shirts are left hanging from one side of a hanger in the closet.
We’ve all been there. After all, who has time to think about organizing your child’s clothes when you’ve got the rest of your life to organize too?
Organizing your children’s clothes doesn’t have to be complicated. Lucky for you, I love to organize.
In this post, I’m going to share my simple tips and step-by-step ways on how you can organize your children’s clothes to save you time and stress.
**Just so you know, Tales of a Messy Mom may collect a share of sales from purchases made through the affiliate links on this site. See the full disclosure here.
5 Easy Steps to Organizing Your Child's Clothes
Step 1: Collect All Clothing & Put into One Pile
I learned this process from the Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and it was so helpful in getting rid of clothes I no longer needed or wore.
Depending on how much clothes your children have, this process may seem daunting and overwhelming, but bare with me, okay?! I promise, it’ll be worth it.
Take out ALL of the clothes from your child’s closet(s) and drawer(s) and place them into one pile.
Step 2: Sort Clothing into Different Piles
Now that you’ve gathered all of their clothes from every closet and drawer, you’ll need to start sorting through that pile. You’ll want to sort the clothes into the following piles:
- Seasonal items (winter/summer, etc.)
- Donate/sell
- Keep
If you end up having seasonal piles, be sure to store those clothes you won’t need for the current season in (labeled) containers and store them right away. You can get a handheld, portable label maker off of Amazon, or simply add a piece of tape to the container and write on it with a permanent marker.
For storage solutions, I recommend clear, stackable containers so that you can easily see what content is inside.
If you end up having donation piles, be sure to pack them up and take them to GoodWill or your local shelter as soon as possible. Don’t save that task until later or it’ll end up adding to your clutter.
Step 3: Sort "Keep" Pile by Similar Items
Are you still with me? Good.
Now you should only have a pile of clothes that you want to keep or need for the current season, which should be much less than what you started with.
Hopefully, step 2 helped eliminate any storage issues you had because you’ve gotten rid of some clothes and will have space for what’s left.
The next step is to organize your “keep” pile into similar categories of clothing (these will vary based on age):
- Underwear
- Bras
- Socks
- T-shirts/long-sleeve shirts
- Button ups
- Pants/shorts
- Dresses
- Pajamas
- Onesies (one pile for whites, one pile for patterned/ printed)
Step 4: Organize Clothes by Color
This is my favorite part! This may be too extreme for some of you, but there’s a method to my madness.
How many times have you needed a particular color shirt to go with a pair of pants and spent minutes searching through your drawers or closet?
Organizing your clothes by category and color eliminates the time it takes to find what you need when you need it. Imagine the frustration you could eliminate from your children by sorting their clothes this way, so they too can find what they need (without asking for your help!).
Step 5: Decide What to Hang, What to Fold, and Put Away
Once you have your categories sorted out by type and color, you’ll want to decide what to hang and what to fold and store in drawers. I recommend hanging things like dresses and button-up shirts in the closet and putting items like t-shirts and pajamas in drawers.
If you have older children, it would be appropriate to hang their jeans in the closet too, especially because they may not fit neatly in drawers. For smaller children, keeping pants in drawers for them to access themselves would be best.
The Best Way to Fold Your Clothes
I’ve found that the best way to fold your clothes is by rolling them. This allows you to fit more items in a drawer AND the ability to see everything that’s in that drawer at first glance. This also avoids having to rummage through your drawers to look for a particular shirt/item.
See steps below:
1: Lay Flat and Fold Sleeves Inward
2: Fold in Half
3: Roll
Once you’ve folded/rolled all of your items, store them in drawers by similar items. You can have t-shirts in one column, pants in a second column, and and pajamas in another. Now you’ll be able to see all of the contents in one drawer at first glance!
How to Stay Organized
After you’ve completed the initial organization, it’s important to continue to stay organized in order to keep saving time and stress. Use these tips and tricks to help keep everything neat and tidy on a day-to-day basis.
Put Clothes Away After Each Use
Once you’ve organized all of your children’s clothes, the key is to stay organized. How do you do this? By putting stuff away after wearing or folding it.
Seems like a no brainer, right? But, how often do you or your kids take something off and just throw it on the couch/bed/chair/floor?
Just take a few seconds and put the clothes away as soon as you’re done with them, and then you won’t have a huge pile to put away later.
Buy Only What You Need
It’s so easy to buy a lot of clothes for our kids, but the truth is, they don’t need all that we buy. How often do your children wear the same thing all the time anyway? Especially if they’re old enough to pick out their own clothes.
To avoid creating a ton of clutter, be sure you’re only buying what you need. There’s a difference between what you/your children want and what they actually need.
Store Seasonal Clothes
I touch on this in the steps above, but it’s important that at the start of every season you put away what clothes you will no longer need. For example, at the beginning of summer, you’ll want to pull out any long sleeve shirts and pants and store them in a labeled container to keep them elsewhere.
This also helps eliminate clutter. This way, when you go to find an outfit in the morning, you’re not wasting too much time sifting through a bunch of clothes your kids won’t even be able to wear.
Let’s Review
Voila! There you have it. 5 simple steps to help you organize your children’s clothes. Let’s go over them one more time:
Step 1: Collect all clothing and put into one pile
Step 2: Sort clothing into different piles
Step 3: Sort “keep” pile by similar items
Step 4: Organize clothes by color
Step 5: Decide what to hang, what to fold, and put away
If this process seems stressful for you, remember that you can do this in simple steps. Also, remember that you can do this with wine!
Whatever your drink of choice may be, go grab it along with your favorite music or podcast, and get to work.
You’ve got this, mama!
Did you find these steps helpful? What are some of your favorite tips and ways to organize your children’s clothes? Leave a comment below, and be sure to share this post with all your mama friends.
This post was written by the talented Kristi Bahgat.
Kristi is a wife and full-time working mom of two toddlers (Lyla & Zane). She’s surviving motherhood with coffee, cussing, and cereal for dinner. She’s also the creator and writer behind the blog, Keeping Motherhood Real.
Kristi’s goal is to connect with and encourage other mamas to be open about motherhood by sharing her own journey with honesty & humor. She also shares parenting tips and advice, motivation and inspiration for life, and a few of her favorite things from products to recipes.
Get more great ideas from Kristi on Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, or follow her on Facebook.