Several months ago while Joanna Gaines and I were both still pregnant 🙂 she posted on her Instagram account that she was going through boxes of her children’s old clothing. She mentioned the idea of only saving one box per child of their old clothes. Wow, one box! That seems crazy, considering I have MANY totes of outgrown childrens clothing in my basement and both of my kids are under two years old!
Well it can be done and this is how to do it:
The idea is, keep ONLY the most sentimental clothing items that your child wore. As in, the darling outfit that they wore for a certain picture session, the timeless and sweet smocked outfits, your favorite monogrammed items and the hand-tied little girl bow collection, etc. I went through all of Emerson’s clothes from the past 20+ months that he outgrew and was easily able to make piles of the FAVS vs. just the clothes.
** note – I did keep all the other outgrown clothes in boy/girl age containers and will hang on to them for a little while longer. This simply separates the favs from the rest for when the time comes to get rid of all the baby things. **
Once you separate out your favs, put each piece neatly folded in it’s own gallon-size Ziploc bag. I stacked all of the bagged pieces on top of each other and squeezed out as much air as possible, almost like making it vacuum-sealed. Lay each flattened bag in a Rubbermaid tote in a stack. By putting each piece in a zip-lock bag inside a tote, you will preserve the life of each piece for many years to come, saving it from mold, mildew-smell, bugs or any other general wear and aging.
Keep this special tote in a place that will be dry and safe. I keep each of mine on a top shelf in my kid’s closets so when more special items are outgrown, I can add to it easily. Someday when my babies aren’t babies anymore, I will offer them their clothing memory boxes to see if they’d like to have them for themselves or even better, their own children someday!
While on maternity leave, I spent lots of time working on simplifying our house and in turn, lives. I went through all areas of our house and kept only what we really use and donated the rest. This simplified lifestyle is very refreshing! I am a very clean and organized person anyway, but this extra step to remove some excess feels even more freeing. The children’s clothing memory box project was part of my home simplifying.
Have you practiced any life simplifying practices lately?
xoxo,
Mallory
