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How am I already preparing to store outgrown baby clothes?! It seems like just yesterday that Eleanor was being swallowed by her preemie clothes.
Now I have a growing mountain of newborn and first months’ clothing that need to be put away for safekeeping. With Eleanor being our first child, I want to hold onto as much as possible in case we can use it again in the future.
However, our home doesn’t have an abundant amount of storage space, so I had to come up with a way to store outgrown baby clothes wisely.
If your baby’s dresser and closet are overflowing with clothes that are too small it’s time for vacuum storage bags! Seriously, every expecting mom should just go ahead and add these to her registry.
There is no sense in keeping a dresser or closet full of baby clothes that no longer fit. Especially when you need that space for quickly approaching larger sizes.
How To Store Outgrown Baby Clothes
Step 1- Get everything out.
Pull everything out to sort and organize. Decide what you want to keep or give away as you go back through all those outgrown baby clothes.
Step 2- Make groups.
Make piles according to size for the items you wish to keep.
I took it a step further and made stacks for similar clothing types within each size. That way they can be organized together within the storage bag. For example: separate piles for newborn onsies, newborn footie pajamas, and newborn outfits.
While most of our baby clothes are obviously girly, we do also have several gender neutral pieces, so I separated anything that could later be used if we have a boy.
Separating and labeling these specific items in a separate storage bag could potentially save me from a lot of unnecessary digging down the road.
Step 3- Fold and bag.
Now that you know exactly what you want to keep and have everything grouped, you can quickly fold and bag up all of those piles. Be mindful not to overstuff beyond the fill line.
Step 4- Zip and vacuum.
Yes, you could follow this same process and use regular bags or plastic storage containers to store outgrown baby clothes, but vacuuming the air out is the magical step that is going to save so much space!
For the Sentimental Mamas
If your family is complete and now your babies are growing up, then you probably don’t plan on reusing your outgrown baby clothes.
You will likely hand off bags full of clothing that could now be better used by someone else. But that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of everything. Especially those sentimental outfits that take you back to a special place in time.
For me, it’s the tiny preemie outfit Eleanor wore in the NICU. Her first Easter dress. I could go on… I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Anyway, I came across a sweet idea shared by Joanna Gaines. She packed up just a few of her most favorite baby outfits for each child in separate bags and wrote a letter to go in each one. Years down the road, when her babies are grown, she can pull those time capsules back out to share with her kids.
My mom saved some of my newborn outfits. That was special moment that we were able to share as we were going through those vintage, generational pieces when I was expecting.
If you have special ideas for how you’ve gone through this process, be sure to share in a comment.
Lea says
Holy Cow, I don’t know why I never thought to use vacuum bags… Thank you so much for the idea! This is going to help save so much space.
toriloveletters says
I’m glad this idea helps! It has been perfect for us