By many people's standards, I suppose my children don't have that many clothes. I certainly don't spend a lot of money buying clothes, and we sometimes have lean seasons where we run a bit low on boy's shorts or wish we had just a couple more girl's short sleeved shirts.
The closet you see above is the hanging portion that contains our 3 children's shirts, sweaters, dresses and skirts (plus a few fancy dresses that hang above). What you see is basically what we have, minus the clothes that are currently dirty or in use. There is also one small dresser (3 drawers) that houses their pants and shorts, plus another dresser that holds all of their summer and winter pajamas, underwear, socks/tights and cloth diapers, and some jackets in the hall closet.
In other words, we aren't overflowing with massive amounts of clothing, and yet we aren't lacking by any means, either.
What brought about the issue is that despite their average/moderate wardrobes, I still find that keeping up with all of their clothes and the never-ending laundry piles is just overwhelming me (despite the improvement of having a family closet, and trying to make sure that clothes get re-worn when they aren't really dirty).
The laundry still piles up, and piles up. Imagine once we add another baby with more cloth diapers? (Oh please, let my 2 year old potty train before February!)
Which Raises the Question... How Much is Too Much?
Is there a point at which owning too many clothes actually becomes a liability in terms of managing the laundry and maintaining it all? If we owned less clothes per child, would my closet and I be on better terms?
I've been searching around trying to figure out just what is a reasonable amount of clothing for a child, and what a more minimialistic closet might look like.
Here is what I am planning to pare down to (per child):
- 7 casual outfits
- 3 dressy outfits (probably 2 casual dressy, 1 fancier)
- 3 pajamas (maybe 4-5 for the toddler)
- Plus, their current assortment of underwear and socks, and seasonal jackets and shoes.
It isn't shockingly less than we have right now, but certainly it IS much less overall.
A One or Two Month Experiment
I'm not prepared to get rid of things for good quite yet. My husband easily goes along with my so-called "brilliant" (and sometimes short-lived) ideas. He only asked that I store the extra clothing away someplace that we can add it back in if we discover that my solution wasn't really so brilliant after all (hmm, I think he knows me).
My goal is one to two months, to give this a real shot and examine the benefits (if any).
And it makes me excited. In this weird, de-cluttering, when-did-I-begin-to-have-minimalist-tendencies kind of way.
I think that I'm still definitely still processing the dire level of need and want that we saw recently in the Philippines. Continuing to work out what it means to practice good stewardship and frugal generosity as a Christian, and at what point we cross the line over to materialism, waste and greed. And always learning more of the benefits of simpler living, freeing up more time and resources for the things that are most important.
So, the questions remain... will my laundry routine be reborn? Will the effort required to maintain the closet cease to make me sigh? Will I be happier with less children's clothing, finding that we save money and that even choosing what to wear becomes simplified?
And just for fun, some links of interest that I came upon the other night while ruminating over this whole idea:
My Minimalist Wardrobe (Vlog) @ Money Saving Mom
How Many Clothes Do I Need? @ Living On a Dime
How Many Clothes Do My Kids Actually Need? @ Actual Mom
When It Comes to Clothes, How Much is TOO Much? @ Lots of Kids (one mom's positive experience with limiting the amount of clothes her children had)
And lastly, a Yahoo! Answers discussion about how many clothes a child needs that will make you feel better about how much you own, no matter how large their wardrobe is. Read it and gasp.
Wow! So many great ideas for keeping children's clothes in control! I only have one little girl right now but I can totally see how it is already getting a little out of control! I have been very lucky to have family and friends who have passed down a lot of nice clothing. I will probably start small and just get rid of similar pieces, but I'm not sure I can get rid of any of her smocks, they are addicting!
I feel the same as you
This is awesome! I love the idea about storing clothes away to see if you really miss them. While I'm not a hoarder by any stretch it is so easy for me to end up with more stuff than we need or even want. A lot of it has to do with relatives sending us stuff I don't have the heart to part with in a timely fashion. Every year at Christmas and birthdays I try to send food (scratch made fudge, homemade preserves, Lobstergrams, restaurant gift certificates, etc) hoping that trend might catch on. Hasn't happened yet!
Our boys now have a minimalist wardrobe as well and I love it. One thing that I noticed was never mentioned in so many cmoments though was that children doing their own laundry. My boys (I have 4) are all responsible for their own laundry. They each have a hamper for dirty clothes and they all know that we expect them to be responsibile enough to keep up with it. On occasion I have to tell them to do it if I notice them looking dirtier than usual, but a reminder is usually all it takes. My husband and I do our own and our infants. Kids really like having "ownership" of responsibility...even at as young an age as five! Our laundry room has a step stool and star stickers on the washer and dryer marking the right cycle. Give it a try, it's one of the best patenting decisions I ever made!
My kids have way to much clothes, gonna de-clutter tomorrow. Love your blog btw :)
Thank you for this post! Our son is almost 11 months old and I KNOW he has too many clothes! And I always seem to dress him in my favorites anyway :) I also want to plan ahead for the next season, as well, but can barely get past the current season. The links you shared were helpful as was reading everyone's comments on how many outfits seem to work for their kids. There will be some dresser cleaning at our house very soon!
Can we get an update to how this system is working for you? I have been following your blog for a while now and am very interested on how this is going :)
Stephanie, my wife is trying to do the same thing. I'm curious about the result of your experiment.
I do not get hand me downs and no one buys clothes for my kids, we buy everything. I am working really hard not to over buy this season (this is my new goal). I really do well with 4 -5 of tops/bottoms. Any more and everything does not get worn and any less I can not keep up with the laundry.
I come from a family of eight children and we always had limited clothing, about as much as you're trying! I never felt deprived or lacking growing up, in fact quite the opposite! Now that I am an adult, it has helped me to know how much I REALLY need. To this day I still only have a small amount of clothing and am quite happy!
Keep up the good work and Bod bless you.
I try to keep my kid's wardrobes at about 2 weeks worth of shirts, one week's worth of shorts/pants. Usually we end up with less shorts/pants because of holes. Boys can be rough on clothes! This allows me to be more flexible on when I do laundry. I usually keep up with it fairly well, but I have wiggle room with a few more clothes in the closet.
Last spring, I realized that my middle son had a ton of shirts! I counted almost 30 t-shirts! And that was just t-shirts, not dress shirts or school shirts (they wear polos for school). I still have no idea where they all came from, because I kept all that my oldest wore, and he didn't have that many at that age. As soon as I realized the ridiculousness of it, I took half out and gave them away. My son didn't even notice. Which made me even more glad that I did clean out the closet!
@Rachel, I have boys too, I just went through my older boys clothes as I was making room for his new school uniform. he had a wide drawer full of trousers, managed to put away a few pairs of joggers that were preschool wear and he no longer needs, but I had to throw away about 6 pairs of jeans/joggers that had holes or mystery stains on them. unpacking clothes for my second born I've realised that we saved a lot more pants than tops until about age 3 (food stains presumably responsible), then there seem to be more tops than bottoms!
I can definitely manage with less in summer when I can line dry clothes. in winter we have to use indoor airers and it takes ages to dry clothes, as we don't have a dryer, so laundry piles up more then and so we need larger wardrobes at those times.
So interesting that you blogged about this Stephanie, because I have been doing the same thing. Setting aside extra clothes. It just seems like a massive amount of work to keep up on it all.
As a side note: My mother grew up with them getting only three outfits. However, it was really hard for her. She went to a public school where there were a lot of kids from richer families. They had nice clothes. Hers got worn out pretty fast. She couldn't wait to get a job as a teenager so that she could buy some of her own clothes.
@Kimi @ The Nourishing Gourmet, I can see that three would feel a bit too minimal. I was talking to my Nana today and she said that she had around 3-5 growing up, and I gathered that although it was acceptable, it wouldn't have been her preference. I think that 7 plus dressy clothes feels a bit more reasonable. I'm still having a slightly hard time going down to only 7. It really doesn't feel like very much at all!
But, I am so inspired by a good friend of mine, who was a missionary in Sudan for 5 years and recently moved to Canada for a couple of years. They had to start from scratch coming back, and they've built their children's wardrobes up very minimally. She says that she loves it- it's very freeing for her to not have to manage more clothing than that, and she keeps her 3 children's clothes (and has room to add her new baby's clothes as well) in one small closet!
We are certainly not lacking in the clothing department either...how MUCH we have in our Western society!! One idea that I had long, long ago, was to have a special set of *outside clothes* per child. Those clothes get worn and worn over and over without being washed. Even our 16 year old does not wear *inside clothes* for things like outdoor jobs, playing street hockey or delivering papers. Over the years it has saved me TONS of laundry. Our children look presentable for going out...and their outdoor clothes become rags when they are done with them. :)
Blessings to you!
Camille
Thanks so much Stephanie! I've been thinking of doing the exact same thing - weed out our wardrobes to the basics, and store the rest, to see how many clothes we truly need. Thanks to your inspiration, I think it will actually get done. Hope you update us with the result in your family!
Gina
I had really been wanting to clean out the kids' closet...so, inspired by your post, today I did! I got rid of two big bags of clothes, reorganized the "extra bins" that hold either the next season or next size of clothes, and cut way down on how much was in their drawers. I also hung up most of their t-shirts.
My two older kids (5 and 7) fold and put away their own clothes. My daughter is always complaining that her drawers are too full...well they won't be now!
Something that I have struggled with sometimes is my own emotional attachment to the "cute clothes" (particularly for my older daughter, who has tends to not like the same things as I do), does anyone else have a hard time with this? But I find the more I declutter and cut down, the better it feels. Freeing, really. Thanks for the inspiration!
@bloggymommy, My *plan* is to make a quilt one day with the baby/kid clothes that do have sentimental value to me. I may make one for each kid. Only problem? I am not a seamstress--but I took a quilting class last year. It doesn't come naturally to me, but I hope to make it work one day with those few pieces of fabric from my kids' baby clothes. I checked out your blog & it looks like you already sew, so I bet it wouldn't be too hard for you to pick up quilting!!
When my kids are younger I aimed for maybe 7 outfits total - that would include one nicer outfit for a boy. Girls tend to want a few dresses/skirts mixed in. Three pairs pj's. pretty simple. My kids tend to gravitate towards their favorites anyways so there is not point having things that they might wear once in a blue moon. My 15 year old son is still like that. He has about four pairs pants and about four shorts (which he also needs for soccer/basketball) and about 10 t.shirts/underarmour, two hoodies and a couple pairs of pj bottoms. For shoes he only wants to wear runners and then has soccer kleats and basketball shoes and other sports equipment. He always looks nice but just doesn't have a desire to keep buying stuff that'll sit in his closet untouched.
You know--I read your family closet post and thought: I wish we had a big enough closet to do this (I have streamlined the dirty clothes hampers and put them all in our closet). Maybe if we all got rid of a bunch of clothes, we COULD make a family closet!
I forgot to mention that I have decided to basically not buy anything for my second daughter (at least not until she is older and knows the difference). We were blessed with two girls that can share clothes. My sis and I always shared our clothes growing up!
@Erin@TheHumbledHomemaker, I love that about having had two girls so far! The younger one wears so many of the clothes that I saved from my oldest, and I don't buy her hardly anything between the saved clothes and gifts we receive. It's great!
I wonder if any of us have the courage to do this to our own wardrobes! :) I agree with the kids stuff. After a bunch of hand-me-downs, I found my younger son had 6 church outfits and only 3 pairs of shorts!
I love the idea of having 3 of everything - 1 to wear, 1 for spare, and 1 for in the wash!
We have been given large amounts of hand me downs, so my children have far too many clothes.
I do laundry every 2 weeks so our kids have enough clothes for at least 2 weeks. My kids play outside every day, and usually are wet and dirty by the end of the day so they have a lot of shirts and shorts and probably 10 pairs of pajamas. Most of my son's clothes are hand me downs and most of my daughter's clothes are gifts from grandma so we spend very little money on clothing. I have considered having less clothing for them but frankly, I love only doing laundry every 2 weeks. It makes life peaceful and right now, I need peace over minimalism.
We currently have a 20 hanger rule at our house. Our children have small (very small) dressers that house their socks, under garments, pjs, belts, cloth diapers, etc. The remaining shirts, skirts, dresses, pants & shorts are hung up and have been since the beginning of time...well OK since they were born. I have even given up my own personal dresser that is now the entertainment center for our living room. The children are allowed to choose 20 items (I encourage them to pick 10 tops and 10 bottoms but they get to pick). Once they have their 20 items I pick one tote full of in-season clothes to tuck away for rotation. If they stain a shirt or damage pants, I simply pull out the tote and they pick a new one. This has worked well for us. We have been blessed with hand-me downs from family and friends and rarely ever have to buy clothes. Sure I pick up things at garage sales, thrift stores and clearance racks...but hardly ever. I will put back a $1 pair of adorable shoes because I cannot justify the "need" over the "want". That is not to say that we do not have 20-30 totes in the basement of rotation clothes. With 5 children I have come to realize that you graciously accept donated clothes when given. Then I sort through them as time or need arrises and donate the extras to womens shelters, thrift stores, needy families, friends and family. We try to "pay it forward" as much as possible. I am always amazed at the amount of clothes people give to us. 10-15 garbage bags at a time. I cannot imagine going out and buying all of those clothes, let alone washing them. It just isn't economical any way you look at it. Do we have a spotless laundry room? Not always. I do have a minimum of 5 loads per day rule and the children do help. We still have our days when a child decides they are going to throw every piece of clothing they can find on the floor and then climb and stomp all over them. This can be fixed with a lock on the closet door, but those independant toddlers will always find a way to open sesame and pandoras box at the same time.
@Danielle, Oops! Forgot to mention that our stained and ripped clothing that we do not upcycle ourselves is donated to the local Humane Society. They use old clothing and towels/blankets for bedding. Waste not want not. That is our motto. We try to make sure we spread the goodness to the last possible inch.
Stephanie,
I have 10 children ages 4-14 and even the minimal amt. of clothing can become overwhelming! Here is an idea that worked great this summer for the younger ones (the 10 and over crowd are pretty good at managing their minimal closet which is similar in size to your suggested plan). . . .
So, for the younger crowd, you can actually have 7-10 "everyday outfits" - match them up into actual "outfits" and then put 2 or 3 on their shelf and put the rest into a file box and store it directly above their shelf/dresser/hangers (but out of their reach). Have them wear those 2-3 outfits on a rotating basis. Hint: they can usually wear them for 2-3 days before washing is truly needed. Just have them rehang (pegs are good for this) the skirt or pants and shirt each night and toss their undies and socks into the hamper. They'll end up with a small load of laundry about once a week. Same for jammies - rehang on the peg if it is still clean and only put in the hamper every 2-3 days. Usually little ones are getting baths at night, so their jammies stay clean anyways (barring potty accidents!).
THEN, when an outfit has "had it" (stained, ripped, etc. . . ), just toss it, grab your box, pick out a new outfit for the rotation, and away you go. You have to sort of do this seasonally so that you've got your "fall" clothes in the box and not a bunch of shorts and tee shirts, but it GREATLY reduces the amount of clothing just hanging around the house. . . it also helps bc the kids don't have as much to manage and are more able to really care for the small amount that is out at any given time.
(I must say, this obviously only really works if you are homeschooling and it doesn't matter if your children re-wear clothing for more than one day!)
You have inspired me to post a series about how we do clothes and laundry. . . coming soon!
I think we probably have too many at this point. Mostly that is because we are combining sizes. For some reason, my daughter (2) is still fitting into many of her 12-18 mth clothing along with 18-24 and some 2 year old stuff. So we have a lot of clothes right now, but it is a blend of sizes (many of which was either bought or given to us ahead of time). My son (4) is doing the same thing, he is wearing size 3 and 4 clothing right now, so it seems like a lot, but both sizes fit him.
Once we get rid of some sizes, I am certain that they will not have much left over. I think too many clothes adds clutter in your closet and mind. Who wants to decide what to wear when you have 20 shirts? The decision takes more time than you want it to.
We made vow this past summer, that my daughter would only wear clothes that were made by me (aside from sleepers) and that my son would wear 50% of clothing made by me (I can't do tshirts yet, havent mastered the art of sewing knits yet). So we made dresses, pants and shorts for the kids from new and repurposed materials. It was fun and made each piece of clothing meaningful.
@Natalie, I finally decided to tackle the "scary sewing with knits projects" this past year, and it's gone surprisingly well! :) I made pajamas for my little boy, and a dress for myself so far. The biggest tip I have is to use a ballpoint sewing needle for your machine; the rest was pretty simple. The blog MADE http://www.dana-made-it.com/ has some good tutorials, too. I'm so impressed with your sewing goals; I'm nowhere close to that yet, but my kids love it when I make them new clothes!
Blessings,
Michele
This may have already been said, but are any of your kids old enough to do laundry themselves? My parents had us doing our own by about 8. My daughter's only 3 so that doesn't work for me yet but I am a huge fan of the clean clothes bin. I have a clean basket and a dirty basket so if I don't get around to actually putting the clothes away, they're at least dealt with and not cluttering up the house. You could do this for each person or each room (if they share). The clean basket is also useful for storing clothes that can be worn more than once before washing. And Amen to getting rid of more stuff!
@Whopper, My 4-yo does much of our laundry. She still needs some supervision with the soap (plus she can't reach the dispenser), but she loads & unloads the washer & dryer. She's been doing that since she was 2 1/2. :)
Blessings,
Michele
This is sort of what I do. We have been blessed with a lot of hand-me-downs and so I let my oldest daughter pick ten outfits plus some church outfits, then I pack the rest up for the next daughters so they have something that is new-to-them. However, I haven't found that it makes much difference in my laundry duty- if they wear an outfit a day, whether it's on of ten or one of twenty - it still adds up to seven dirty outfits a week. The only thing that has made a difference is teaching them to put their pajamas on the bed right away instead of on the floor (which eventually goes to the hamper because I can't remember if they need to be washed) and teaching them to "reuse" clothes if they're clean and haven't been worn long. What limiting the outfits does help with is being able to put things away more quickly because I don't have to jam things into a drawer. It also helps with the kids being able to quickly pick out a matching outfit.
As for international donations, I've heard that it's cost prohibitive to ship clothes overseas and so it's not usually done. But I haven't researched it much. I usually donate to the crisis pregnancy center (though clothes rarely make through all of our kids without stains or rips).
I am so astonished at how many clothes people seem to think children need. I knew we had too many when my first son was little but I was pretty bad at laundry, I think he probably had about 14 outfits plus some random extra items. Now we are down to about 8 outfits each season with occasionally a few more tees. I think it's probably more than I would like ideally, but we often visit my parents for a week and it is useful not to be reliant on doing laundry there. He starts school in a few weeks and will be in uniform for that so this winter we will be experimenting with how low we can go on at - home outfits. I think we will aim at 3- 4 regular outfits plus one scruffy set for outdoorsy days and one special shirt. I am trying to keep a 'one-week' rule in mind while going through the saved clothes for baby who is 1 now, but he is a messy eater so we seem to need more tops at the moment for him. There definitely needs to be a bit of leeway In any rule for stage and disposition of individuals.
BTW, I wonder if there's a way to get our clothes to children who really need them, say in Russia, Africa, or somewhere else. Do you know of any way to donate clothes to international children?
@Sarah, A lot of Mennonite churches, including the one we attended until 6 months ago, send huge amounts of good used clothing to Russia every winter. If you want to know more, I have a list of all the churches across US and Canada. You can email me: margi.regehr@gmail.com
@Sarah, why donate to international countries when there are many children's homes/shelters for families in the united states that NEED clothes. I'm so tired of people always looking to help others in other countries when many people aren't looking to help the very nation that they live in. Just my rant.
@Amanda Pickens, My personal feeling is that we need to be willing to do both. There are people in need right beside us, all around us. We can't ignore those needs. And yet, in other nations there are so many less resources available to those in need, that I don't believe we can close our eyes to those needs, either. I think that we each just have to seek where the Lord would have us give, and He is big enough to meet all of the needs. Just my opinion. :) (But thanks for being honest with yours, too! I do get why you feel that way, for sure!)
@Stephanie @ Keeper of the Home, I dooo understand what you're saying Amanda............but I also agree we need to be generous to anyone in need. In our area, we are able to donate to Mennonite thrift store which sell the clothes/household items very reasonably here. (We buy many things there!)and use proceeds to support global missions..winwin.-
I was just commenting to husband about this very issue this past weekend! Great minds think alike!
To answer the question though, I think my kids have way too many clothes! There are 4 boys (6, 4, 2, <1) and 1 girl (3), and I have all their current sized clothes in one place. I look at it, and I think, "How many times has he/she actually worn this? Does he/she really need it? Will the next kid wear it?". I have sorted through all the different sizes (I keep them for hand-me downs), and it's still too much! I guess it looks like a lot because there's clothes for opposite seasons. Maybe I should implement your idea into our clothing dilemma!
Sarah
My number is three.
Three long sleeve shirts
Three short sleeve shirts
Three pairs of jeans/cargo pants (different children like different pants)
Three pairs of shorts.
Underwear is maybe six. Six in a package? I can't remember. Then a light waterproof jacket, a hoodie and a winter coat.
I do one load of laundry every day. This has worked very well for our boys but #4 surprised us, she arrived in a dress and we get loads of hand me downs for her from friends. Her closet is overflowing. I am in the process of similarly pairing down her wardrobe too but I imagine she will always have more clothes than the boys.
This is so timely for me! We are moving soon and I'm trying to pair down my closet. I think I'm going to go back through the "keep" pile with this in mind. If I purge too much it all came from goodwill anyway. I know where to buy more!