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Our daughters have more than enough clothes, but somehow we still struggle to find outfits to wear in the mornings.
If you have little girls you may have noticed that the vast majority of their clothing is sold as sets of matching tops and bottoms or is part of a line of mix-and-match solids and prints. This is all very well and good if you’re buying clothing at the store, but can be tricky when you throw hand-me-downs into the mix.
With our son, this doesn’t seem to be a problem because he’s completely happy with jeans and long sleeve t-shirts. Of course, we could just adopt a similar wardrobe for our daughters, but our girls are not plain jeans and t-shirts kind of girls 
Our daughters seem to have lots of tops and bottoms that only go with one thing or several shirts that go with a couple bottoms. This can make getting dressed tricky when that one pair of matching pants is in the laundry.
For a while now, Tim and I have been trying to come up with a system to simplify and organize the girls’ clothes. I’ve been at a loss as to what to get rid of. I didn’t want to simply limit them to a certain number of tops and bottoms because I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to put together matching outfits, but I think we’ve finally come up with a solution!
We’re in the process of organizing all of the girls’ clothing into outfits and hanging them together in their closet. While this does mean we need a bottom for every top and vice versa, it also means that we’ll be able to get dressed without searching for something to match. Thankfully, we have quite a few children’s hangers with pant clips from all the baby and toddler outfits we’ve received in the past 6 years.
This will also help us get rid of excess clothing without worrying that we’re giving away the one pair of pants that matches our daughter’s favorite shirt.
We’ll also keep a couple pairs of jeans and a few random shirts in their drawers for messy play.
So far, we’ve gone through our 5-year-old’s clothes and this system seems to be working well.
1. Start with all of her clothes. That means going through the laundry and making sure every single piece of (day-time) clothing is present. You can skip over the socks, undies, and pajamas.
2. Weed out anything she’s outgrown, worn out or stained.
3. Organize the clothes into like categories. Our categories were shirts, pants, dresses, and skirts. When we go through her clothes for the summer the pants category will change to shorts/capris.
4. Now start matching up tops and bottoms into outfits. It helps to start with the wildest prints or the items that you know only match one or two other pieces.
5. As you match items you may need to make choices, such as if you have two shirts that both only match one pair of pants.
Here you can either make the choice yourself or ask your daughter which shirt she would rather keep and which one she’d like to share with another little girl.
Since, Emahry is 5-years-old I chose to ask her opinion about several outfits–this outfit solution wouldn’t work nearly as well if she ended up hating some of the outfits. By involving your daughter it’s more likely she’ll wear these outfits without any protest.
6. Once everything is matched up, take stock of what you have.
Were you only able to put together four outfits because your daughter is lacking pants? Maybe the simplicity of having outfits organized together would be worth the cost of hunting down some pants to make outfits with a few of her favorite tops.
Does your daughter have enough outfits to wear a new one every day for three weeks straight? Maybe you could consider letting her choose her favorite 12 outfits and pass the others to another family or donate them to a local school, shelter, church, or thrift store.
With Emahry’s wardrobe we came up with 15 outfits. This is definitely more than she needs! Instead of getting rid of outfits right off the bat I decided to try a trick that worked for me last year. We placed all of the outfits in her closet with the hangers backwards. After she wears an outfit we’ll hang it back in the closet the correct way. In two weeks, we’ll see which outfits she hasn’t worn and we’ll have a better idea of which ones (and how many) we can pass on to someone else.
What do you think? Are we completely crazy to do this, are you already reorganizing your daughter’s wardrobe in your mind, or is this a problem you solved years ago? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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I think this is an awesome idea! I have two girls and a boy, and I definitely see how some pieces of clothing just don’t get used. This is really smart and I’m going to try it out right away!
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When we initially organized the outfits we were able to get rid of 2 pairs of pants and 3 shirts that literally matched nothing else in her wardrobe. It’s funny how they just got stuck in her drawer and the closet without anything to match them. I’m sure we’ll be able to weed out at least a few more outfits in a couple of weeks. I love getting rid of clothes, it feels so refreshing, not to mention it makes the laundry pile smaller, too
This an interesting idea. I usually try to keep plain pants/skirts and have patterned and plain shirts. Then I can usually put almost anything together. Occasionally we have a patterned skirt and I try to find two shirts that can be worn with it. If I can’t find any in the drawer I will look at buying one from Walmart.
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I like your idea of plain pants and patterned shirts. In our experience the plain pants/skirts works fine with jeans, khakis and even standard girl colors like pink and purple, but both of our daughters dislike blue jeans and plain khakis. It also gets a harder to make outfits when the plain pants are fushia and kelly green
We’ve been given almost all of their clothes which include lots of colors and patterns, so I think this solution will work best for our girls.
Also, our 5-year-old was always putting together outfits that made me cringe because she likes patterns and lots of color. So part of this was simply to help make our mornings more peaceful without trying on multiple articles of clothing to find an outfit that we both liked.
Oh, and I definitely agree that sometimes it’s worth shopping for a certain piece to match what our little ones already have. We recently purchased a pair of pants for Emahry simply because they were a perfect match to a shirt she was given recently that has quickly become her new favorite.
While she had enough outfits for us to simply pass the shirt on to someone else, she absolutely loved it. By spending a little money we were able to not only help her make an outfit she adores, but we also reminded her once again that her opinion is valued and she is loved!
Almost all of our kids’ clothing is hand-me-downs, too (with the exception of Gavin who gets almost no hand-me-downs). I tend to keep a few pairs of pants for the girls and quite a few more shirts that go with multiple things. I find that Alaine is always spilling something on a shirt and it is easier to change just that than change a whole outfit. I also am pretty vigilant about cleaning out clothes on a regular basis. I don’t let the drawers get cluttered. It something is outgrown or gets badly stained or never gets worn, out it goes right away!
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I definitely need to clean out more regularly, but hey, that’s what moving is for, right?
Also, I tend to keep more clothes for Emahry so there are more things still in good condition to be passed down to Eliya and Amelia. As I’ve been looking through their clothes I can see already that by the third girl, we’ll need to find some new things and little girl #4 may need an entirely new wardrobe once her sisters have all had their share to wear it out
Oh, and thankfully, the two older girls are pass the spill everything stage, so we typically get to wear the same outfit all day, if not two days in a row, which is Eliya’s new obsession, “I wear this again tomorrow?”
Great idea! I don’t think we could hang the outfits up in the closet though.We have all three kids sharing one teeny, tiny closet! It’s stuffed to the gills with just their church clothes that *have* to be hung up! I do need to weed through a bunch of my kids’ clothes, though. Thanks for the encouragement!
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For our latest clean out we took the girls down to 3 church dresses each. Jonathan has 2 pairs of pants for church (khakis and black twill) and 3 shirts. Those fancy church dresses sure do take up a whole lot of room.
Since we cut down on the fancy clothes that the kids only wear once a week, we were able to gain valuable closet real estate for their everyday clothes. Now we’re able to fit all their clothes hanging in two small closets (each the width of one standard door).
I do this with my daughters clothes. But I defiantly keep more then 15 outfits, because she is so messy and I too need to pass it on to girl #2. My question is What do you do when your child is in between sizes. Like inbetween 5t and 6x. I am stressing out about what to do with pants that are too short and pants that are dragging the ground. This won”t be an issue during the summer because then we will be into shorts. Also what do you do about summer and winter clothes. Do you store winter while it is summer?
My oldest has always been a size ahead of her height. We simply roll her pants up once. If we have trouble with them staying up I either iron them or simply hand tack the sides of the rolls where the pant seams are. Being short myself, this is something I’ve had to do my entire life
Also, I’m at the point where we only keep pants and short with the adjustable button hole elastic–love that stuff!
We also store winter clothes during the summer and vice versa. We’ve found if we leave them out the kids try to wear clothes that aren’t appropriate for the weather.
How do you hand tack the pants? I would love to know. Never heard of before.
Once the pants are cuffed, I simply sew a few stitched through the cuff and the pant leg right at both of the side seams. This way the cuff isn’t sewn the whole way around but it stays in place nicely.
Thank you so much.
What do you do if they wear the outfit and at the end of the day the pants are clean enough to be worn another day but the shirt is not or vice versa? Do you just “borrow” something from another outfit?
but Im glad it’s working out for you.
I think my laundry pile would be more like a mountain if I washed everything everday regardless of how clean it was
I don’t wash the whole outfit, that would definitely make too much laundry and would wear the clothes out faster. We just hang up the portion of the outfit that is still clean and wash the dirty parts. This means at any given moment we may have a few partial outfits hanging in the closet. Those partial outfits are simply off limits for choosing. Once the laundry is finished we reunited the outfit.
I’m thinking about printing a page with photos of the complete outfits to make it easier to put them together after the wash, but since I hang all the clothes, it’s pretty easy for me to keep track of. As our girls get older the visual reference would help them hang their own clothes. Although when they’re older and can easily choose their own outfits this system probably wouldn’t be necessary.
I like this idea, I do something similar for my daughter when she goes to her Dad’s for the weekend. I fold her shirts like they do in stores (both arms folded in and then in half so you can see the whole front. Then I fold the pants (in half the wide way and then in thirds the lengthof the leg) I open the shirt back up and place the pants inside and fold the shirt back up. This method may work for those that would like to try this but don’t have the closet space for storage.
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s PPPP <— Every outfit looks similar to this, not that her and
ssssss Dad don't mix and match on their own…
Oh yeah that makes sense
The photo idea is cute. I will definitely keep this system in mind for the future. Any chance you could do a post on clothes storage? I’m not doing too badly with it but there’s always room for improvement.
Are you looking for ideas on storing the out of season clothes and the clothes that are either too big or too small? If so, I can definitely write a post with what we do, although I’m not sure it’s anything special
I LOVE it! I had already been doing this in our house for my girls and other moms thought I was a little crazy to just use a pair of pants with one shirt. But, it is THE BEST! It keeps me sane and makes sure that all the shirts and pants get worn since they always have a match. If I end up with some hand-me-down shirts that needs pants, I just go looking at thrift stores and clearance racks for pants to match those shirts. Has been awesome!!! Thanks!
I’m glad this system has worked for you! It does sound a little crazy to go against the mix and match wardrobe idea, but it has really simplified things in our home. No more asking what they can wear or if this shirt matches this skirt or if they need to wear pants or leggings under this dress–simply pick a hanger and put it on.
I’m sure as they get older we’ll transition back into a wardrobe that can easily be mixed and matched, but for our little girls this is working well.
Allyson,
as Daniel and I prepare for our new little one, I appreciate reading ideas on how to simplify and organize resources. Specifically, storing clothing. This seems like a great system for keeping outfits together. Thanks for sharing!
These are such practical getting dressed tips. When our kids can dress themselves without much direction it is such a times saver!! I recently started a Thursday link-up party (yes, today:), and I would really love to see this post and/or any others you would like to include. I am at allthingswithpurpose.com. Hope to see you there and for many more Thursday’s to come!!
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