A simple way to organize and store children’s clothing that is out of season or the wrong size, including maternity clothes.
From the very beginning of my parenting years, I was blessed with a large amount of hand-me-downs. My sister who has one son 3 years older than my oldest son, gave us many of the adorable outfits Blake wore throughout his baby and toddler years.
When our next child, a girl, came along, we were blessed with bags full of clothing from a cousin who had 3 girls and my husband’s brother who had 2.
Along the way, I shopped garage sales and thrift stores for cute (cheap) clothes that rounded out our children’s very secondhand wardrobe.
As our family grew, the secondhand clothing we were blessed with became hand-me-downs for the next child and the next child and the next child. I am still to this day pulling clothing from the storage tubs that has been passed on from my older children. The memories come flooding back every time I do the “Great Clothes Switchover” (i.e. seasonal change of clothing).
Larger families mean a larger amount of hand-me-downs. Not only do we tend to be the recipients of the 1.8 children household’s clothing, we also tend to keep EVERYTHING. You just never know when you might need extra clothes, and it isn’t uncommon for Baby #4 or so to suddenly have NOTHING because everything wears out at the same time (especially if you have a string of little boys or little girls!).
While some families choose to keep nothing that hasn’t been used in X amount of years (for instance, it’s been 10 years since the last boy was born or something like that), I don’t fall into that category. I tend to keep most things…just in case.
NOTE: Now that we are at the end of our baby years, I am culling clothing and giving things away, but we still have plenty of tubs, and I am also hanging on to many keepsakes for my children to have when they are grown.
I have always used heavy duty plastic tubs to store our extra clothing in as shown in this photo circa 2010.
My system of sorting is incredibly simple and works very well for minimizing the effort and time it takes to put things away and get them back out for the next child. The Great Clothes Switchover becomes very simple to do because of my system.
If you are looking for a more elaborate clothes sorting system, check out how Lauren at Mama’s Laundry Talk stores her hand-me-downs.
So, here is the large family clothing storage system that works for me!
Sort Hand-Me-Downs by Child, Not Size and Gender
I did seriously try sorting by gender and size…once…long ago. It didn’t last. When you have a large family, it makes more sense to sort by child.
Each child has his or her own tub with hand-me-downs that will fit them next. There are also Baby tubs (more on that in a moment).
NOTE: If you have a couple of kids the same size, or as you come to end of your hand-me-down years, you can combine a couple kids into one tub. Currently, we have the “little boys” in a couple of tubs and the “little girls” in a couple of tubs since they are so close in ages and sizes.
Sorting by child makes finding what you need for a particular child much easier, and it also makes putting away clothes for the next child easy because you know exactly who that article of clothing needs to go to and which tub it belongs in.
Label storage containers on the top and front
I used to only label my storage tubs on the top, but then my mom came up with the great idea to label them on both the top AND the side of the tub. Sometimes you need your mom to state the obvious. I don’t know how much time I wasted pushing tubs around so I could read the top of the tub. *facepalm*. Now, I can clearly read each tub’s contents from the top and the side. Thanks mom!
Each child has a labeled tub until there are no more hand-me-downs for them. For instance, about the time my oldest son turned 13, there weren’t any more hand-me-downs coming in for him. He was 5’6″ and we didn’t know anyone with kids his size willing to part with their boys’ clothing. However, my next son who is currently 15 (and 8 years younger than his older brother) has a tub of t-shirts his older brother used to wear that he hasn’t quite grown into. Since there are still hand-me-downs, he still has a tub.
And that’s the beauty of this system. When someone outgrows something, it goes into the tub of the next one down. For instance, when Keian was little and outgrew a pair of jeans and they were still in good shape, they went directly into Micah’s tub. And when Micah outgrew his baby things, they went into the tub labeled Baby Boy. I didn’t have to think about what size things were, I just had to know who got the item next.
The tubs are labeled with masking tape, so I can easily change a tub name when the time comes (for instance, after Micah’s younger brother was born, his name went on the tub instead of “Baby Boy”).
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this large family clothes storage game, it is to remain flexible and move things around as needed!
Baby Clothing Storage and Maternity Clothing Storage
Besides tubs labeled with the names of each of my children, I also have Baby Tubs and Maternity/Nursing Tubs which become a storage place for my “normal” clothes when I am pregnant.
My Baby tubs are labeled:
Baby Boy
Baby Girl
Baby (gender neutral)
So, if an item of clothing is distinctly one gender or the other, they go in their respective tubs. If it is something I can use for either a boy or a girl (like receiving blankets or mittens or onesies), I put it in the gender neutral tub.
When I find out I am pregnant, it isn’t too much longer before I need maternity clothes, so I switch my normal clothing out with maternity clothes. Once baby is born, I remove my maternity clothes from my closet as soon as humanly possible because by that point I’m tired of wearing them. In fact, I even have bigger sized jeans that I can usually fit into within a week or so of giving birth so I do not have to keep wearing maternity clothes! At that point, I also pull out the nursing clothes and put them in my closet.
Shoes get their own storage container
I know some people don’t like hand-me-down shoes, but there was a time in our lives when we were VERY grateful for secondhand shoes! However, I do not like to store shoes with clothes because it is too difficult to dig through clothes and any tiny speck of dirt that remains on a shoe will end up in the clothing. ICK! So, I have a separate shoe storage tub that is kept in the same place as the clothing tubs.
NOTE: The only time I don’t store shoes separate of clothing is in the case of our snowsuit storage.
Store Tubs Based on Similarity and Frequency of Access
My tubs are stacked based on what is in the tub and how often I need to access the tub. Right now, I am into the little girls’ tubs WAY more than anyone else’s, so I made those tubs the easiest to get to. When I store things, the shoe tubs are together, girl tubs are together, boy tubs are together, maternity and nursing tubs are together…you get the idea.
Store Clothing Where it Makes Sense
We have lived in a lot of houses over the years, and I have always chosen my clothing storage based on available real estate. In one house, I stored them in the laundry room. In another house, an outside storage shed that had room for me to sort inside worked quite well. Our last house only had room for storage in the garage. In our current house, the tubs are in the attic just off my bedroom. I haul them into my bedroom and sort on the bed.
The perfect place to store your clothes is where you have room and where it won’t be a burden to go through them or haul them to a place where you can easily go through the tubs. And don’t hesitate to ask for help from your husband, your kids, a friend, your mom (remember, it was my mom helping me that made me finally see I needed to label the front of my tubs!).
Adjust as Your Family Grows and Changes
The order and labels of your storage containers will change as your family grows and changes. Once upon a time, I had a whole bunch of little boys, so those tubs were the ones most frequently accessed, and I kept them near the front of our storage area. And now that there are no more babies, the Baby tubs have been re-labeled Keepsake tubs.
See how we organize our closets!
READ >> Large Family Closet Organization
And here are some posts from friends of mine with more clothing organization ideas:
- Angie at Many Little Blessings has some great ideas on how to sort through your own closet,
- Dana at A Slob Comes Clean tells us how to purge the clothes without fear.
- And finally, something that has been on my heart for many years….Emmy’s clothes. Tara at Feels Like Home shows the beginning steps to making a quilt from baby clothes. This is something I hope to someday be ready for. Read Emily’s Story >>
Post originally published 2010 | Updated 2021
Kacie says
WOW!
Tonight I just happened to be going through my son’s clothes and pulling out his next size. I also went through his NB through 0-3m stuff to pull out the gender neutral stuff for our baby girl to wear.
We live in a small apartment with minimal storage space, so I really can’t hang onto everything right now.
I have a large bag of clothes that I’m going to consign in 2 weeks. It’s full of things that my son never wore (and I am guessing that future boys won’t wear, either), and a surplus of pants in his current size. And I STILL have 9 pair of pants in his size on his shelf! I think that’s a little much, but oh well.
Kara says
I’ve hit upon a similar system, though I’ve only got 4. 🙂
Amy says
I’ve been doing it this way since I had 4…must be the “magic” number! 🙂
LaVonne says
I have one daughter. Her clothes are now neatly in our garage in bins labeled (on top) by size. I need to have front labels or side labels!
Thanks for sharing.
Erin says
This is EXACTLY how we do ours! I used to try to keep them in bins labeled by size and season (12 months winter, 3T summer, etc) but that was WAY too complicated, especially since not all “3T” clothes are the same size and not all 3-year olds are, either! This system works perfectly for us!
Amy says
The whole mis-sized thing is one very big reason this method works so much better for us too!
Natalie @ Naddy's Blog says
Fascinating! I have a tub of “too big for Nathan” hand me downs, and a tub of “too small for Nathan” clothes I’m saving, and the same for my girl. I also have a tub of maternity clothes, although due to my habit of buying maternity clothes whether I need them at the moment or not if they’re under $3, I now have outgrown my rubbermaid with those…
Jenn says
Do you have just one tub per child? Do you have several bins per child and differentiate between them somehow?
I currently have bins by size & gender, which as you say is not the best(that whole mis-sizing mess) but considering I have at least one(sometimes 2) tubs per size & gender (like 2 tubs of 2T girl, etc.) I’m not sure what else to do. (I do put clothes in the size bin I think they belong in regardless of what the tag says.) I am currently expecting another boy after 4yrs of girls so my “baby boy tub” is really about eight tubs of boy clothes currently divided by size.
I really like the idea of your system -maybe I just need bigger bins?
Do you find that in digging through the bin for Jr. next clothes you end up “missing” items they could have worn because they were buried or whatever?
(I also should note that we have two very generous families in TX that send us their like-new hand-me-downs all the way in MI, thus the abundance of beautiful clothing!)
Thanks!
Amy says
The younger the child, the more bins they have. I don’t think anyone has over 2.
JustCorey says
I was just trying to figure out how i was going to store the baby clothes my son is growing out of… I was wondering if i should go all out and do it by size (nb, 0-3, 3-6, etc) or just that it is baby boy, toddler etc… I will probably have another before too long so there is no way i want to get rid of all the cute clothes i have acquired 🙂
Verna says
I love storeage tubs, but lately I love the see through ones even more. It allows me to see what is in the tub without having to mark everything on the outside. I also love how they stack and store.
If if I am not storing baby/children clothes, they are useful for people of all ages…. Mine have quilt stuff/sewing supplies, platic canvas patterns and give away items.
Have a great day!
LIB says
I needed the tip for the side labeling…like you I’ve been lableing on the top and then stacking. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the most elusive!!
🙂
*Blessings*
LIB
http://bit.ly/daNjZ9
MamaLaundry says
Well, apparently I bought cheap-o tubs because I noticed that none of the tops of yours bowed like mine did! Hmmm. I thought it was all tubs…didn’t realize it was just mine that were crummy!
Those tubs are so beautifully organized. Don’t you just love that?! 🙂
-Lauren
Amy says
Yes! The only thing that would be better was if they were all the same color or some such thing! lol
Emily says
This is my first time to comment and only cause I think my brain is too hot (it’s hot in our house right now) to figure it out on my own. Right now I have 3 children, (almost)4 yr old girl, 2 year old girl, 5 month old boy. Right now I have hand me downs organized by sizes which is complicated like you said since size is so unpredictable. I understand what to do with the oldest girls too little clothes but what about once the 2 year old girl outgrows them. Do you just start labeling them by size for the next girl???? I could have 3 boys in a row (if the Lord continues to bless us in the area of children). I do love your blog and all the practical advice!!!
Emily
Amy says
Emily,
Hi! I take the last girl’s clothes and put them in the tub that is currently labeled Baby Girl, but could just as easily be labeled Girl. Hope that helps 🙂
Celee says
I still attempt to sort by gender and size. I do put them away according to when I’ll need them next. I have 2 girls that share a room and are 2 yrs apart so the clothes from big sister go almost directly to little sister. They stay in the girls’ closet. The rest of the tubs and vacuum bags go into the closet under the stairs.
Celee
Nony the Slob says
Somehow, I thought I had already commented. Love the reminder about WHERE to label the tubs. Ummm, I forget to even label mine, which generally results in frantic searching when the first cold snap hits.
Kathy says
WOW. I feel so organized! Mine looks almostly identical to yours! And I am not good at this sort of thing!! I label mine with white duct tape on one side and the one nearest so whichever way I end up stacking them it is accesible. We are unique in that we only have one girl, for wahile i just stored ALL of her stuff in one large trash can because i wasnt sure how she would go through sizes. I still do shoes that way. There was a time when we couldnt afford to buy plastic boxes
Kathy says
sorry almost done:) We couldnt afford plastic boxes (even cheap adds up) so I found a store that had a cardboard box the right size that they got regualry..I waited and got a ton of those so they would stack nicely.
Tonya says
I store the kids clothes in plastic bins as well. Yesterday, I went into the garage to get baby girl clothes out to send to a friend. As I got to the bottom of a bin, I noticed some clothes that had been chewed by a mouse! UGH! As I stood there wondering how a mouse got into my tubs, I noticed a big ball of fluff too. I figured it was the nest until I looked a little closer. A dead mouse. A very dead mouse. I quickly exited the garage, called my sweet (and not irrationally paranoid niece) upstairs and she got rid of the mouse for me. And went through the bin to finish my job. The only thing I can figure out is that the lid must not have been on very well, the mouse got in, I fixed the lid and the mouse was stuck. Shudder.
Amy says
ACK! I wouldn’t have thought they could get into a plastic tub!
Angie @ Many Little Blessings says
I’m impressed with how organized you are! We only have one hand-me-down to do in the family – from our oldest son to the next one. Luckily, it pretty much can go from one side of the closet to the other. Luckily, we’re able to give hand-me-downs of Molly’s stuff to a younger niece.
Great post! You make it all sounds so doable!
Angela says
Thanks for sharing about your system. I use a simple indexing system for our storage tubs. I am no longer keeping the things Abel outgrows since we don’t plan on having any more children, so the number of tubs in my storage area has been greatly reduced. Just this past Spring I finally got rid of all his old stuff. I, like you, was hanging onto all of it in case of another baby boy. 🙂
Jenny says
That is a great idea! I had never thought of that. I wonder if it would work as well for us, since there’s over 2 years between my girls and the things Suzi outgrows won’t fit Ivey for a while. I might have to have two Ivey tubs. I am pregnant again (due in April) and this would probably work better for my youngest and the new baby because they will only be 20 months apart. I will have to try it. I also wish I had a space that big to stack some tubs. Maybe we will have a garage someday!
Amy says
My younger kiddos have more than one tub 😉
Christine Salinas says
Wow, I’m so happy that I ran across your blog in my google search – what in the world to do about hand me downs. I’m pregnant with #7 – the last 4 are 8 and under. I have been storing clothes the gender/size way for ever and every single year (twice actually) it is a night mare to do clothes switch overs. This is so excellent. I’ll have to use some trash bags until we get back from vacation – saving my pennies until then. This is great.
So you save all shoes together – by gender?
Amy says
I save all the shoes together period. I have two tubs for them and I just go through them as needed. As to your other question, yes they go back in the bucket with the chance that they could fit. 🙂
Christine Salinas says
Sorry. One more question:
What do you do about the clothes that still fit an older child but are out of season? Do they go back into their bucket? They may not fit 6 months from now, but they may…
Jeanie says
what I do is have a “seasonal” box for each one. so, at the end of summer, I pull out the winter clothes and toss in the summer clothes. If they still fit, they go into that child’s box, if not, they go into the next youngest child’s box. that way, when summer rolls around, we pull them out and try them on. if they still fit, they go in their drawer, if they don’t fit, they go to the next youngest. If they happen to still be too big for that one, I put them in the bottom of the box, for them to try next year.
Amy says
That’s a great idea!
Jennifer Gaytan says
Yep, mom of 5 and tubs are definitely the way to go. I do go by size and I did figure the front label thing right away. I only save boy clothes because I only have 1 daughter. She will be 10 this year and we are done with pregnancies. 😀 7 pregnancies, 6 deliveries and 5 kids.
Erin - The Usual Mayhem says
Great and very logical system! At this point I only have two that are still growing, so I have them in colour-coded tubs with the size range taped onto the box. Footwear is in two tubs, one for boots and one for anything else.
When the “unexpectedly short pants” issue arises, it’s so great to just go straight to the attic, isn’t it?
Amy says
It is indeed!
kate says
I currently have 4 littles 4y/o and under, 3 girls, one boy. We use clear bins (red or purple tops for girl stuff, blue top for boy stuff). I label each tub 0-3/3-6month, 6-9/9-12month, 2T-4T etc. because the bins are clear I can see exactly whats in them, which helps when looking for something specific. Also, I put the outfits in bins by when they fit, not necessarily the size on the tag (ex: if a pair of pjs is marked 9-12mos but fits my kiddos at 6 months, it goes in the 6 month bin). I also have a bin for maternity/postpardum clothes – I dont blame you for not wanting them in your closet!!
Mia says
Using names instead of sizes is brilliant! I have my tubs labeled by size (I have all boys at home). My daughter searches the tubs in the sizes of her two boys when the seasons change our her boys outgrow something, too. I have found that being able to pull out a tub with a complete new-size wardrobe has been an amazing blessing to our family (and my daughter’s). It is well worth the amount of space dedicated to tubs! I have plans for my husband to build platforms for all of our beds so that the tubs can slide under and free up room in the storage space.
karen says
Wow, I have been storing my children’s clothes in bins like this since my first was born. It has really worked great for us as my first three were all girls. I never thought to label by name. Not sure if that would work well for us yet as I have a few sizes between two of them. Also, for labels, I put one on the “handle” of each bin. That way, even if it gets turned around, I can still see the size. I have seen on pinterest where you can make storage systems for your bins out of vox pipe or wood. Unstacking and restacking can be a lot of work!
Ellie M. says
Perfect! I never thought of labeling the bins with the next kids name! I’ve gotten so many ideas from this article…I must get started organizing! Gotta go, thanks!
Cat says
Stumbled upon this while getting my bins back in order after number 4 went from size 6-9months straight up to 18-24months. He’s a big little guy. He also just so happened to make me rethink my whole bin system. I had been doing gender, and size but so far we’ve done girl-boy-girl-boy and it feels like I’m constantly going in and out of the bins. Looks like my weekend project just became labeling by kid. Fingers crossed.
Tessa says
I know this is an old post but wanted to put in my 2 cents.
My 4 boys are all about 3 years, and therefore 2-3 sizes apart. For the first years I label the bins by what age they are when they outgrow them. Because some 9mo sleepers fit my short 18month olds. And my 7yo would still fit some longer size 5 pants. I rarely look at the sizes on the clothes label when storing. As they get older the clothes start to fit more accuratly by size to ages so it will balance out as they go through puberty growth spurts at different ages. But I have my 11yo in one bin then a 10 and 9yo bin in between then my 8yo goes into the 8yo bin when he needs it. I can’t just transfer between kids because of the age difference. This works for all my boys for now. If we are ever blessed with a girl I’ll probably do the same, depending on age spread.
Just another idea 🙂 Plus I label both sides of the bin because sometimes I put it on the shelf the other way around by mistake.
Motherof4girls says
Love it! I do this too, but a friend gave me a tip to always use square boxes (tubs, etc) so they can be stored and compacted better (and not tip). So I use the classic good old banana box (with the insert of the stiff paper for the bottom and top hole). This fits exactly 1 wardrobe/child at this point (my oldest is 10, but bigger clothes aka bigger child may need 2 boxes). I also pull seasonal clothes out because by the time the warm season comes back, they have outgrown the shorts and tank tops. Bonus, I can pass it on, and not have to sort through drawers to find them. Clothes get sorted/pulled from our laundry as its cleaned (while I fold). Everyone pitches in to put things away. I choose to fold because I love it (soothing lol) but also because I can catch stains, wrong sized and wrong season clothing faster this way. We have a walk in closet for all the stored clothes, and all boxes are labeled per gender and per size. Yes I went as far to organize to size. My girls often would skip a size when they grew, so knowing I can grab a box of size 4T instead of the 2-4T size saved me my sanity (I hate looking through stuff). Anyways, my struggle is the shoes. We get a lot of hand me downs from friends, and I can’t keep up with all the shoes. Mostly because they take up so much space! Sigh* Next house , I get a 2 car garage lol. Anyways, thanks for the tips. Love seeing the organized hand me downs! Thanks!
Amy says
Most of our hand-me-down shoes have long since worn out, but I keep those in a big tub too. And I only keep what is REALLY worth keeping! Thanks for sharing your tips!
Brittany says
I love hearing about other people’s storage systems and thinking through what I can do to improve my own. 🙂 I put off the “Clothes Switchover” every year because it’s such a big ordeal!
We use old computer paper boxes to store our clothes because one friend that hands down clothes to us always brings them in those, and they stack perfectly on the shelves in my kids’ closets. Then the boys’ clothes go in the boys’ rooms and the girl clothes go in my daughter’s room. (I’m sure it also changes things having 5 boys and only 1 girl.) I sort the clothes by type and a range of sizes, partly due to the smaller boxes. It also makes it more convenient when someone randomly needs a new pair of shorts to just pull down the “Shorts, Size 7-10” and to see what needs replaced.
I love how you pointed out that it will change with life and houses. It seems like as soon as I get in a groove with a routine, life changes and I have to find a new way to do things! 🙂 I’m glad it’s not just like that in our house!
Amy says
I think we need a reward for doing the Great Clothes Switchover! That might make us less likely to put it off! lol
A says
Hi, great article! What brand and size tubs are your favorite? Thanks!