Outgrown Clothes: Share Your System!

Despite everything I might have said previously, we ARE going to sell our house. GAK.

I am elated -- we've been talking about it forever and now we actually get to do it! -- and sniffly -- we brought our babies home to THIS house! - and terrified - how in the world do I live here with two kids AND keep it looking neat and clean?! The plan is to get in show-worthy order this week, take pictures, sign the paperwork and stick the sign in my yard on Monday. MONDAY. GAAAK.

There's no time to waste, right? For a minute I sat on the couch this morning thinking: "WhatEVER. It looks FINE. I don't have to go CRAZY." A split second later I was perched atop the kitchen counters, wiping down the tops of the cabinets above the microwave. I want this house to sell, okay?

My biggest fret is the kids' room. Not only is it stuffed full of furniture we can't exactly move out (two cribs!) but I'm running out of storage space for all their STUFF. And not just toys and books and blankets, I'm talking their boxes of too-small clothes. Boxes and boxes and BOXES of outgrown clothes.

I think, at this point, I have saved as many clothes as will fit in this house. And that's having given away many of Jack's newborn things back when I thought it was pointless to store years' worth of clothes in our tiny closets, and having given away lots of clothes to friends who (with my permission!) passed them on to others. When Jack was about a year old I changed my mind about giving clothes away -- they're expensive! We want more kids! It will be awesome to have the next size up just waiting in a box! -- so I started keeping everything. But now? Now I'm pondering a return to my original plan. THERE IS NO MORE ROOM.

But! We are moving. (Everyone cross your fingers that my house actually sells!) I will have more room in our next house. And for house-selling purposes we are going to park on the street and turn our garage into a storage unit, which means I DO have more room. So this afternoon I dug out all the boxes and piles and plastic tubs and shopping bags. I haven't had time to even THINK about sorting clothes, so I have outfits just shoved under the cribs -- no folding, no sorting -- and when I finally pulled everything out and half-heartedly started to rifle through, I gave up. I could box them all up, but it was going to require more mental and emotional energy than I had in my reserves to box them up correctly.

I somehow managed to put enough in the Goodwill pile to free up a plastic tub and one set of plastic storage drawers. With that extra room I was able to cram all the too-small clothes into mostly appropriate places. I didn't pay attention to size (or even gender -- FAIL!) but they're roughly boxed together in the right seasons and with the right shoes and socks. That's as much as I can do right now. I heaved them all down the stairs and left them by the garage door for my husband to put away.

But I am wondering -- what's your outgrown clothes system? Do you have one? We definitely want another kid, so I don't want to get rid of them. But we have SO many, even after weeding them out! And you know, I think one friend returned Jack's 12 month clothes with all of HER kid's clothes. SNEAKY!

I'm really interested to hear how other moms do this, since I obviously want to do it better in our next house. And I never hear anyone whine about this most dreaded task the way I do, so you all either have better storage systems or cheerier dispositions. You're probably cheerier BECAUSE you have an awesome storage system, right? SHARE YOUR WISDOM!

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