The Joy of Less--Supplement for Kids (Part 2: Kids' Clothes)

Kids' clothing must multiply inside their drawers. I don't know how else to explain it. Last year, when I took out all my daughter's clothes from her drawer, I found 18 t-shirts. I don't even have 18 t-shirts and I don't change sizes every year. Could she be using 18 t-shirts a year? This sounds excessive.

With kids' clothing, it is best to take every item of clothing out of the drawer and closet and hook near the door and count. Just start by counting it all. You will probably be amazed by how many outfits each child has.

Then make a plan for how many outfits a child will reasonably need between laundry days. With four kids and a healthy dislike for laundry, I like to have a week supply of clothes fit into one load of my high-capacity washing machine. This means that we can't have a ton of clothes in our drawers or the load will get too big. (I quit sorting the laundry years ago with no noticeable difference. If you're feeling extra brave, you could try this too.)

I have decided that my children (aged 6 and under) each need about four or five complete outfits for a week. (Maybe you will judge that you need seven. This just means more laundry.) For my daughter, this would include dresses. Because the kids are small, I help them to make less laundry by judging their clothing from the day before: if it's not too dirty, they can wear it the next day.

(My own philosophy is that kids are quite dirty all the time. If they have a small(ish) stain on their shirt, no one can tell if this stain came from a week ago, yesterday or thirty seconds ago. Maybe some people think that my kids are little street urchins, but I generally believe most adults (a) don't look at kids clothing very critically and (b) generally assume that the stain was recent instead of from yesterday. Maybe my policy on wearable clothing is too liberal for some, but it works for me and my laundry habits.)

Each child gets one (1) drawer in the dresser where all their clothing goes. If it stops fitting, then I have to look at why. There might be toys jammed in there, or it might be that there are a bunch of clothes that are now too small. (They also get one (1) very small underware and sock drawer.)

Pajamas
Each child gets two (2) pair of pjs. I am almost at the point where I think one pair would be enough. If they have more than that, little kids are not thoughtful or careful about where the pjs go from the night before and they will end up on the floor and likely in the laundry. At nighttime, I say, "Where are your pjs from last night." If they only have one (or two) pairs, then it is easy to remember what they look like. I exchange summer and winter pajamas as necessary.

Specialty Outdoor Clothing
We live in Saskatchewan. It is cold here. In winter, we need a lot of gear just to take the van to the library. Snow pants, mitts, toques, winter jackets, fleece lined jeans, sweaters, etc. are necessary for the six months of the year we have snow and bitter cold. This takes up a lot of space. What we do not have is rain gear; it rains rather infrequently here. It is never "drizzling" like it does on the coast. It rains and then it stops. We rarely go outside when it's raining. As a result, I got rid of all our rain gear including rain jackets. If it's cold, we wear our winter jacket. If it's summer, we run. A little rain didn't hurt anyone. I don't even have umbrellas because there were more inconvenient to store than the value they provided. If you live in a warmer climate where it rains a lot, adjust your clothing stores to reflect this.

Shoes
I limit my kids (and myself) to four pairs of shoes: sandals (worn almost exclusively in summer--this also reduces the number of socks that I have to wash); runners; rain boots (we do still have a "set" of these that the kids rotate through as necessary); and winter boots. For the kids that are interested, I can bring out slippers, but for some of my kids, they don't care and I don't need extra shoes to find during the day. (We also got electric heated floors in part of our house which really reduces the need for slippers.) There is no reason to have shoes for every occasion! I don't have "fancy" shoes for the kids--instead they wear their sandals. My oldest son's runners are black and quite discrete when it comes to formal occasions.

My pseudo-rule (for other things as well) is that I want the drawer to be mostly empty by the time I get to the laundry. If there is one outfit left there, then I know I have judged the amount of clothes that my kids need correctly. If there are still tons of clothes left, then more paring down can be done.