Storing children's clothing

I'm looking for advice on how to store/save children's clothing and whether I should even be saving all this clothing.

I have three children. . .my oldest boy just turned 3, my younger boy just turned 1 1/2 and now we have a baby girl. I have all of ds #1's clothing stored in plastic bins by size to save for ds #2. But I haven't gotten rid of any of ds #2's clothing. .just put them back in the labeled bins. Now I have girl clothing to store. I don't even know if we are going to have more children. I now have used up two closets to store all these plastic bins.

DH doesn't want to put the bins in the basement. . .he doesn't feel that would be good for clothing.

I want to save the clothing, not for sentimental reasons, but for practical reasons, but at what cost? The "girl" bins are now going just have to be stacked in a bedroom since I am out of closets to go with it. When does the benefit of saving clothes out way the cost of the space it takes up? I don't have any pregnant friends right now or I would just "loan" out the clothes.

Do you save all the clothing to pass it on down?

[Myrtle]

I'm having a similar problem. Hoping someone else will chime in with some suggestions.

[Heather Micaela]

Save some essentials and favorites and then donate the rest. You will be able to get new hand me downs or find bargains when you need them again. This last baby I almost didnt need to go to the stored items.

I have no knowlege of basements, so I can't help you with that part.

[Sweet Life]

Originally Posted by Heather Micaela

Save some essentials and favorites and then donate the rest. You will be able to get new hand me downs or find bargains when you need them again. This last baby I almost didnt need to go to the stored items.

I have no knowlege of basements, so I can't help you with that part.

We do store ours in plastic bins in the basement - it's unfinished but dry, and we live in a dry climate - we have never had any issues with it. Whether it's upstairs or downstairs storage, I throw a dryer sheet or two in each bin to keep the clothes smelling a little better.

[Sweet Life]

I'm impressed that you have so many boys clothes to save, btw.
My boys' clothing is usually in shambles by the time DS #1 and DS#2 get through them.

[Quiteria]

Originally Posted by Heather Micaela

Save some essentials and favorites and then donate the rest. You will be able to get new hand me downs or find bargains when you need them again. This last baby I almost didnt need to go to the stored items.

I have no knowlege of basements, so I can't help you with that part.

For us, we have so much clutter that it was to the point of needing a storage unit...multiply that cost by a couple years and yikes! I could better afford to buy NEW clothes for that price! So, I started giving away all my dd's clothes. Thinking about it, she's already in a size 12 (years not months), so do I really want to save twelve wardrobes worth of clothes, even if I were to get preg with a girl this very instant?!? No, every year the gap widens, it is less and less worth it to save her clothes.

I thought about saving my ds2's infant clothes just to have something to start off with for a new baby, but since I'm not even preg yet...and I'm already saving the in-between size from one boy to the next....and there's no guarentee of even having another boy or another preg...I think I'm going to sort out a few of the nicest items of size 0-12mo, but I'm giving away everything else.

I figure that just having the space is worth it. I'm more productive, less likely to lose things we need, the kids can play better, etc., with more space. Here's a thought...find the square footage of your home. Multiply your house payment by 9mo of preg, plus however many months longer you think you'll be infertile from nursing (if you are nursing). Divide the money by the square footage, and you'll get the dollars per square foot. I just got my AF back at 14mo, so let's say 24mo between children if I got preg again. $525 x 24 = $12, 600...$12, 600 / 1800ft? counting the basement = $7/ft ... I think my bins are roughly 6sq ft (not even factoring height, just the footprint of one pile of bins). So, $42 to store each stack of bins for 2 yrs waiting for another child. Can I clothe a child for less than $42 using yardsales? Could I make any of that money back if I sold some of it now?

[2sunshines]

I store mine in the basement. There's no way I could store them upstairs. Our basement is dry and I just pulled out some clothes that went into storage 7 years ago and there were on issues.

I keep my children's clothes to pass on down until we know we're done having kids.

[Mama Bird]

We have three children, in a three bedroom house. We thought we were done after Princess and Little Man, but God gave us a Smiley.

DH's sister and her DH have kids close to ours. So we share a lot of clothing. Her DD is a year younger than ours, and her DS is a year older than Little Man.

So, our DD's clothes that are not sentimental go to our niece. Our nephew passes his clothes to Little Man. We have babies about 3 months apart, and they're the same size. So we messed up out little system.

Princess has two big Rubbermaid tubs in the top of her closet...one for fall/winter clothes to grow into or that she should be able to wear again and the other for spring/summer. I keep only what will fit into those tubs. Each boy has one with off-season clothes in it, stored in the top of their closet. We don't have a basement, but this option works really well for us.

If I was unsure about having more children, I would go along w/ Heather Micaela's suggestion of saving the favorites & donating/passing along the rest to other who could use them.

As for storing clothes in the basement, I have ours in space bags b/c I know they're 100% sealed (maybe not air-tight like on the commercial, but they're fully closed) as opposed to bins that have room for spiders to sneak into the bins... and I'm also 100% sure spiders can get into bins

After reading all these posts and thinking about it for quite a while, I have decided to pass on the clothing.

A friend recently sent me a 25 pound box of girl clothes that her LO outgrew (even though she is unsure herself whether she is done having children or not). I felt so blessed opening this box of clothing. Since this is our first girl, I had nothing except boy clothes. I knew right away I need to bless someone else with all our boy clothing.