28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 14 - Childrens' Outgrown Clothing)

Well, it seems only natural after having cleaned out/organized the kid's drawers and closets that the progression of things moves us into to long-term storage solutions of items that have been outgrown by the school-ager that our infant will use later.  Luckily, I have two boys (born on the same day 8 years apart) who are following the same height/weight pattern so my "craziness" of  keeping everything has actually paid off. 

Going back in time...when our first was outgrowing things I realized quickly that throwing everything into plastic garbage bags wasn't going to work.  I wanted to keep the clothes as nice as possible for hand-me-downs (we wanted to have other children).  Not sure if it was foresight or madness but - back then, I came up with a "filing method" for just this reason.

Making it as organized as possible, so that we could just pull the appropriate size and use them, the first thing that came into my mind was the card-filing system at the library.  (Yes, I am dating myself.)  Before the ease of a search cue and computers, you knew where to find a book by alphabetically going through that cabinet.  We have a storage area in the basement that suits the need perfectly so...this is what I came up with.  My own Closet Housewife Decimal System, here is what we have amassed over almost 9 years time:

I made a contentious decision to use the same sized boxes so that when stacked, they look uniform. My 9-5 uses a lot of copy paper so I just take home the empties, which would otherwise be thrown away. However, if you don't have the same opportunity, the local office supply store sells banker's boxes that are the same size. I just didn't want to invest in plastic containers as it could become expensive very quickly and chances of them keeping the same style/shape/size over the years is unlikely.

 

For each clothing size, I "opened a new file"
and labeled it per it's content's size.  To
further differentiate the contents, clothing
is divided in separate boxes per season.  So,
for example, 0-3 month sized items are kept
together and the boxes labeled for
Summer (full tree), Winter (bare tree) and
Miscellaneous (onesies/socks/underwear) (half-n-half tree).

If you are interested in using the same labeling method as shown, I used 2" x 4" mailing labels.  For the trees, I looked for clipart - you could also do something cute like a snowflake for winter and a sun for summer...the possibilities are endless.  Another suggestion - should you have boy and girl clothes - is to put an additional marking (whether it be a seperate label or not) indicating whether they are M/F attire.  What you are going for is a consistent labeling method but the personalization is limitless!

This method works, as I've had turn over in the school-ager's clothes for use with our infant.  The only tweaking along the way was to go back and reinforce the boxes with some packing tape as the years haven't been kind to the glue (seperated on a few).
If you are doing it along the way, as I have, it really is easy to keep up with - all you have to do is get a new box at the change of seasons.  I will say, that if you are having to rework an already in progress method - this is totally worth the time investment in the long run.  It also makes your storage look REALLY impressive!!!