How many clothes/outfits?

seeker

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 9:26 pm

I just got a bunch of hand-me-downs that I couldn't pass up because the quality and style was excellent. (Little kid clothes are so cute. I wish shopping for me was this much fun.) The issue is that the person who gave them to me had an ENORMOUS wardrobe, plus I already had quite a lot of clothing for at least one of my kids from her own big sister. So I will need to do some purging. Seriously, I would need a bigger home to fit all this stuff. Right now it is all over my table and bed. Problem is, it's hard to part with cute clothes your kid could theoretically wear. I need some help figuring out how much is reasonable to keep. Can anyone give me a hint?

I definitely have a surplus of short-sleeve summer shirts/dresses/outfits. I know how easily you go through them, though. But I know I don't need the amount of piles that are right now on my bed. They simply will not fit in the child's drawer (yes, her previous wardrobe fit into one not-very-deep drawer with dresses in closet.) And it's not a crime to wear long sleeves in the summer, so those will need some space too. Cooler days happen. AC happens. Then there are Shabbos outfits. Shabbos only comes once a week, right? Sigh.

On a related note, I do have a random bag that is going to a gemach and could toss these clothes in with it too, but if someone wants them directly maybe we could work it out. I don't know exactly what I'll have but it is pretty clear that I will be giving away a whole bunch of size 3T girl summer clothes and probably a bunch of 4T shirts as well (though I don't know, DD#2 will need a bunch for kindergarten... but this many? How many shirts does a preschooler want?)

seeker

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 9:56 pm

OK, no 2-year-old should own this amount of clothing. This is so obscene it's embarrassing. I put a whole bunch of stuff on a pile to give away/donate/put away for different season/size, and I think I STILL have about 15 outfits just of short sleeve/summer. But I also picked out 5 favorite shirt-skirt outfits, 5 favorite short sleeve dresses, and a bunch of mix-n-match shirt/skirt separates (because the neutral match-anything skirts are staying for fall/winter anyway) with both short sleeve and long sleeve shirts. That's in addition to a few long-sleeve dresses that have to stay because the fall/winter wardrobe is not as well supplied. Her drawer is stuffed. I feel ridiculous. Someone tell me if this is normal? I felt like I purged so liberally, but I must not have if there are this many things I "need" to keep. Now on to Shabbos outfits, and then I can tackle big DD's wardrobe, and then I will save the things that don't currently fit for tomorrow.

zaq

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 10:03 pm

depends on how often you can or are willing to do laundry and whether or not you are willing to wash less than full loads. Enough outfits for a week and a half is more than enough clothing unless you do laundry only once in two weeks. You may want a few extras for the Nine Days.

try this: put nine or ten everyday outfits and two for Shabbos in your dc dresser or closet. Pack everything else away in boxes or bags in a remote closet or underbed storage area and forget about it. See how you manage with this volume of clothing. If it proves to be too little, forcing you to do laundry with less than full loads, add one to three more outfits per child or however many you need to achieve the appropriate balance between the need for living space and the need not to wash clothes every other day.

seeker

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 10:15 pm

I do laundry a bit less than once a week, but like to have enough to go up to 2 weeks in case it doesn't happen. That's a good way to think about it. I think part of the issue is that a lot of this is seasonal. Much of what I had in the past was kind of all-around but this new load is a lot of seasonal...

Zaq I'm finding your post a tad judgmental. I said already that the reason I have so many clothes sitting here now is because someone just gave them to me, not because I decided my kids need that much. About the "poor children" why do you think I'm wasting my night (and it's not the first one) sorting and sifting through someone else's hand-me-downs - hint: it isn't because I can afford to buy my kids whatever they need whenever they need it. That's why I'm thinking 3 times before letting go of things I might want in the future, because I'm not just going to order a new one when the previous one gets stained/ripped. And I already said I have shaved off about half to go to a gemach. I am simply asking for advice in figuring out how much to keep before doing that.

zaq

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 10:30 pm

Sorry you took my post as being judgmental. It was not intended that way. I did give you a reasonable ballpark figure along with a method for tweaking for an optimal result, and I don't think you considered the fact that there is little point having much more than that because the clothes will be outgrown fairly quickly.

But you know you didn't HAVE to accept all those hand-me-downs if it's such a burden for you to go through them all. .

imaima

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 10:51 pm

seeker wrote:

Didn't you postbefore how your kids stain their t-shirts in school doing crafts? Why don't you keep extra for those cases? You can put them in vacuum bags and stick on top of closets or underbeds.

seeker

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 11:02 pm

imaima wrote:

Didn't you postbefore how your kids stain their t-shirts in school doing crafts? Why don't you keep extra for those cases? You can put them in vacuum bags and stick on top of closets or underbeds.

Yes, I am the same one with the kid wrecking shirts, and very happy to have more for her! Wish I'd have gotten them before I went and bought half a dozen more but I guess it's all bashert. Now I have more than I know what to do with, and next year that kid graduates to wearing a uniform (do other schools start uniforms at 5 years old? That happened so fast!) But there are no guarantees that #2 will be any neater so they are definitely going into storage. I am still pretty sure that I won't ever need 25 of them, though. (before any comments about consumerism or such, note that I did not actually count them yet. I am not up to that size. I did the younger sizes, the in between sizes for the younger one to grow into next, and will save the older one for tomorrow because I am tired.)

Zaq, sorry, would you believe I did not even realize both those posts were you? I guess by the time I read the second the name on the first was already up off the screen. Thanks for the helpful hints. You should really get a more distinctive avatar, too!

I did need to accept the hand-me-downs because I did need some clothes. And in order to get the some clothes you need, you need to sort through the whole lot, because someone looking to empty their storage of things they are NOT interested in anymore is usually not interested in doing that for you. I already spent a different evening over at her house picking out just the things that were the right sizes, not horribly stained, and my taste, but I couldn't stop and count because I needed to get done eventually and also because I didn't know by heart exactly what I had at home. So I picked through the lot to find what was the right sizes and likable, and now I am planning the exact wardrobes. And don't worry about the "poor children," about half my bed now is piled with things going to them. B"H I guess the family I received from was very blessed. And probably had to do laundry very rarely.

Barbara

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 11:23 pm

seeker wrote:

We did laundry about once a week.

In warmer weather, DS usually went through at least two shirts, if not more, a day. He would change after playing outside, or after camp. And sometimes after playing outside again. So I really don't think 15 is overkill.

(And worry yourself not. We usually passed DS clothing on to clothing drives when he outgrew them.)

seeker

Thu, Apr 23 2015, 11:40 pm

Hm. Point taken about changing twice on some summer days. I totally forgot about that. They play in dirt. Well, maybe we'll just do more laundry in the summer then because I already purged the size that had too many summer shirts and I don't feel like going back into it Tongue Out

(Also, I realized that some of the dresses are likely too short already so those went too. And one had icky stains that I didn't notice, but I like that dress enough to try to remove it one of these days. But the dress selection at least is shrinking.)

I'm keeping more Shabbos dresses just because those are harder and more expensive to replace if anything happens to them. I'll donate them to a gemach AFTER the kid outgrows them.

imaima

Fri, Apr 24 2015, 12:46 am

Yes, earth and grass stains and ice cream drips all happen in the summer.
You can look up online how to store clothes in drawers efficiently, rollimg them up tight and stacking, so you can fit more in one drawer. if you want to have enough for 2 weeks, that would be 12 weekday outfits and 3-4 shabbes outfits. I find my kids stain their shabbes stuff Friday night AND Saturday morning.