What's In Your Child's Closet?

The ever growing children's closet: Every parent's worst nightmare. What is worse than having to go through hundreds and hundreds of outfits? Then, what do you do with them after that? Do you keep everything in case you have another one later? Only keep special outfits?

My five year old finally is at a steady spot where she generally stays in the same size for about a year. I'm still trying to get her baby clothes all gone through and gone. The mountains of clothes just seem to get bigger and bigger and there is nothing you can do to slow it down. I recently spent three full days going through all of Kiannah's baby clothes to pick what we wanted to keep (which didn't end up being very much at all), washing everything, and putting everything we didn't want organized by size in groups for a garage sale. One thing about garage sales though, is trying to figure out how much to charge for everything. Then you have to advertise. You have to get people to come to your garage sale or you're not going to sell anything, anyways. We tried to have a garage sale about two weeks ago. Yes, I said tried. The town we live in has somewhere between probably 400-500 people. No stores, no gas stations, and 15 miles from the next town with anything in it. Once a year, we have "town wide garage sales," so Justin and I decided that would be the best for getting people. We literally did not have a single customer. Hours of washing, sorting, pinning, pricing, setting up, and all for nothing. We ended up with less money than we started with because we ended up going to the other peoples' garage sales. So now, unless an online exchange page will do us any good, we are stuck donating all those clothes. Sure, it's not the worst thing that could happen, but it would have been nice to get a little something back for all of them.

Thankfully, I have a little bit of a heads up with how to handle this for Maddox. With Kiannah, I put her "special outfits" in a hat box in her closet. Her outfit she wore home from the hospital, for her first Christmas, some of the ones that were our favorite to see her in, they all belong in there. Knowing that, I can already start sorting Maddi's as she outgrows them. She just recently moved up into 0-3 so I already have a box started for her with her special newborn clothes. What did I do with the rest? Put them in a too small pile. I may try to sell them, but if nothing else I can donate them to someone I know who has a little girl, or to my Goodwill store. 

I've always had an opinion about how many clothes I see people buying when they are pregnant, too. NO ONE needs an entire closet of newborn clothes, I promise. Maddox had about fifteen newborn outfits and she barely even wore all of them before she grew out of them. We didn't have a baby shower with her, because we already had so much of what we needed from when we had Kiannah, so our friends and family that decided to get her a gift mostly got clothes. Honestly, we have so many 0-3 clothes, I feel like I'm going to have to do multiple costume changes a day just so she has a chance to try them on. 

Enough about volume though, lets talk style. I, for one, have never been big on brands. We always went to Goodwill, so if I did get brand name clothes, that is 99% of the time where I got them (this is still true.) I am the same with my children. Walmart clothes are just as good as designer clothes. They may not be the "in" thing but they have a great variety. I never could understand why people would spend crazy money on designer clothes and specific brands for children, children who will grow out of said clothes in a year, max. 

AND THE SHOES. Ugh. WHY. Why do people spend upwards of $50 on Jordan shoes for a newborn? I don't even buy my tennis shoes for $50. I suppose if you have a disposable income, or plenty of spending money it isn't an issue. 

Now I'm just on a full blown rant. Speaking of unnecessary, the onesies. They are seriously coming out with some inappropriate ones, like such:

Granted, I have seen some pretty hilarious onesies. However, when you are advertising that you and your significant other had sex in order to have this baby (congratulations for having a way out of having "the talk," by the way) that the child's parent is incarcerated, or profanity, I don't feel like your judgment is intact. Your child isn't here so you can make fun of it with the clothes you put on it. You wouldn't dress yourself like this, so PLEASE don't dress your baby/small child like this. 

This so concludes my rant over clothes, for now anyways. If you've made it this far, thanks for not quitting on me. 😜