sorting and stockpiling kid’s clothes…

Hey! I guess I never told y’all how the yard sale went. =) We were up until midnight the night before sorting and labeling boxes with the various sizes of boy clothes we were selling. We started pulling it all out on the lawn at 6:00 a.m. At 7:00, people started rolling in. It was hopping from 7:00-9:00 and then slowed down a lot.

We priced at rock bottom prices (like $.25 a piece for most things), and we sold A LOT. I’m actually embarrassed to tell you how many items of boy clothing we sold… most of it hand me downs we’d been generously given that didn’t fit, wrong season, etc. AND I had bought a lot of toys at yard sales and consignment that we didn’t end up playing with. Our front yard was crowded.

It inspired me to never let our shed and closets get that full again. At this point, if a new clothing item comes in, one is going to have to leave (in most sizes).

I’ve been following this discussion at Money Saving Mom on stockpiling clothes. It’s been interesting, and I’ve gotten some great ideas from it (especially from the comments).

At this point, I have all the boy’s clothes sorted into sizes. All the baby clothes are in the baby’s dresser, filling drawers all the way down, each drawer devoted to a size, until we hit 12 months. The other clothes are sorted into piles on the floor of our room.

I’m going through each pile and writing down everything I have in a particular size. Then I write down anything I’m needing. (For instance, we could use lightweight pajamas without feet in just about every size from 2T up, so I note that.)

We’re clearing out the shelving in the boys’ closets in the next week or two. And this is our new storage method… paper boxes!!! =) David can get lots of nice, clean, new ones from the office, and they fit the existing shelving really well. We’re going to type up labels and tape them to the fronts of the boxes. This will be so much better than our current method of dumping all clothes in a giant Ziploc bag and throwing them into the shed until needed again. That was a frustrating mess every season…

Anyway, here’s hoping this works… at least for a few more years before the clothes get a lot bigger. =)