Last week I told you about The Organization of Moms contest going on where you have the opportunity to win$2000.00 just by entering your time saving tip (click on the Tip Contest tab to enter). I’ve been having fun looking over all the great organizing tips entered so far.
Avery sent me some products to play around with to challenge me to come up with my own time saving tip using an Avery product. Well I love a challenge and I especially love the challenge of coming up with an organizing solution that offers less steps to a complicated problem.
Well let’s face it, keeping track of kids clothing and clothes to grow into gets complicated for sure. We have been blessed with many hand me downs for my youngest so trying to keep them in some kind of order can be daunting. What I do that has worked for many years is to keep the next two sizes to fit into hanging in the closet (his day to day clothes are kept in a dresser). Then clothes that are bigger than that and won’t be worn for awhile I keep in totes marked with the size on the outside.
So my tip today involves a new labeling system I came up with to simplify my above process even further. I’m super excited because it totally eliminates a frustration for me. It’s going to take me a bit to explain, hang in there with me.
Since my totes are constantly changing their contents I decided to try out Avery’s repositionable address labels to label my totes.
The benefit to this is when it comes time to hang these clothes in the closet I can simply remove the label on the outside of the tote and add it to a hanger letting me know where one size starts and one ends. How easy is that!
Unfortunately I soon realized that these repositionable labels didn’t stick to well on the totes and kept falling off. I’ve since discovered from reading the back of the label package that these particular labels work best on paper. Not wanting to be defeated (I seriously love an organizing challenge) I went back through the various Avery labels and found larger removeable multipurpose labels that stick to anything. They are also archival safe and acid free. So that led me to using those on my totes and adding the smaller labels to that. Like this:
Well you can’t exactly tell that there are two labels there but there is I promise. The smaller labels stick to the bigger label on the tote and there is even room for me to add multiple smaller labels if I happen to have various sizes in one tote. The beauty of it is I can still remove the smaller labels to add to a hanger as an easy visual cue when the size gets moved up. The bigger label stays put for future labels. Perfect! Thanks Avery, my organized closet looks great!
~ Along with some compensation, Avery sent me a selection of their products to play with in order to come up with my own time saving tip. My tips and opinions are and always will be my own.
Sarah says
Great idea!
ashley says
Thank you SOOOO much!! I have been struggling with a way to keep my kids clothes organized. We get tons of hand-me downs(thankfully!) But now the problem is deciding if it’s worth it to keep some of the out grown clothes by both kids, not sure if we are going to have another baby. LOL. So not only do I have clothes to grow-into, but also outgrown clothes hanging around.
Laura says
For outgrown clothes you want to keep for another child I would only keep what you have space to store…maybe just the like new items only for instance. The best way I have found is in clearly marked totes.
Amanda says
Great tip! What do you do when they outgrow the clothes? I tend to let it all pile up until I know someone to give it to or have a ton of stuff to donate. With that system, tons of clothes accumulate and cause an unorganized mess in their closet. Any suggestions?
Laura says
I use a donation station in my house and I either give the clothes away to the thrift store or to my girlfriend who has a son a year younger than mine. Here is the post I did on the donation station:
https://orgjunkie.com/2008/04/storage-star-donation-station.html
Hope that helps!
Traci says
Great idea!
We don’t have many bigger sized clothes for our son so they just stay in one box.
However, we have LOTS of clothes that he’s outgrown and having them in boxes drove me nuts! We had at least 8 Pampers boxes full of clothes taking up so much space in our tiny apartment (saving them for the next kid). So I finally came up with a good solution. I organized the clothes into size and put them in vacuum-storage bags, along with a lable inside that says the size. So each size had it’s own bag and was clearly labeled. Now all his old clothes fit under his bed and they’re so organized!!!
Allison Erhardt says
Wow, that’s a really good idea! I have my kids closets sectioned off into sizes as well, and the really big stuff is folded and on top of their racks in the closet. Now, adding labels…. NICE!
I too have the blessing of hand me downs from friends and family, and that’s fantastic! But how to keep track of it all… yikes! thanks for your wonderful ideas!
Tamie says
Great idea for the labels!
Kristin says
I have put clothes in white garbage bags with the size on the outside. But I also go a step further because my kids wear difference size shirts and pants. I separate short sleeved shirts from long sleeved shirts. I also separate long sleeved pants from shorts.
That way if my kid is in size 4 shorts I know I need size 5 short sleeved tops. It takes a lot of sorting but it’s easy once I get in the groove and MUCH easier than trying to find clothes that fit each season.