How To Organize Baby Clothes

Baby clothes are a challenge in more ways than one. Babies move through multiple outfits within a day, requiring more laundry than you ever thought possible. And they grow like weeds, so you need to continually rotate their closet. Add onto that the fact that baby clothing sizes are inconsistent, rendering labels somewhat useless, and you have just absolute pandemonium in the baby’s bedroom. I have struggled through various attempts to organize our family’s baby clothes, and this is the system that has worked best.

This system isn’t meant to be perfect, it’s meant to be easy. Because new parents don’t have lots of time to maintain perfectly organized closets. In my experience, when I tried to implement a classically organized system for this fast-moving category while in the midst of sleepless newborn nights and difficult postpartum days, it was simply unattainable. This system is supposed to be for the in between. It’s a way to get baby clothes organized, but just organized enough to function, not organized to the point of perfection.

Organizing Baby Clothes in Dresser Drawers

If you are storing your baby clothes in a dresser drawer, this is the organizing approach I recommend:

1. Categorize each drawer.

Step one may be obvious, but it’s nonetheless important—assign categories to each of the drawers. You can do this any way you want, but I would recommend doing so by clothing item type rather than by size or season. Sizes and seasons will rotate frequently, and we’ll get to that, but the dresser drawer categories themselves should remain consistent. Here are the categories I use in our baby’s nursery: tops, bottoms, pajamas, and swaddles/sleep sacks. Odds and ends like sweaters, swimsuits, coveralls, etc. go in the closet.

2. Implement a system within the drawer.

Once your drawers are decided, it’s time to implement a system within each drawer. Here’s what I mean…

Do you struggle to pick out an outfit for your baby because you don’t know what fits them? They’re in between sizes, and you haven’t had a chance to remove the stuff that’s a little tight on them, and you’re not sure if the next size up will work, or if you want long-sleeves or short-sleeves today… And so on. To help support those in-between seasons, implement some ZONES within each drawer.

Keep the smaller items on the right side, and the bigger items on the left side. Similarly, keep the in-season clothes towards the front of the drawer, and the out-of-season clothes towards the back. Here’s a visual:

This will help you find what you need, identify what you don’t have, and understand when it’s time to do a rotation.

3. Rotate when needed.

When you find yourself always grabbing from the left side because everything on the ride side has gotten too small, you’ll know it’s time to rotate sizes. Put the too-small clothing items in a box for storage or to be donated (depending on if you’re saving the clothes for future kids). Then shift the items on the left side to the right side, and bring in the next-size-up clothes on the left side.

In the spring and the fall, or whenever your climate changes enough to warrant a wardrobe shift, you can rotate the items in the front with the items in the back. Sometimes you might not even need off-season clothes for babies who are growing quickly between sizes, and that’s okay. The system is just there to organize what you might have.

4. Extras are optional.

The beauty of this drawer organization system is that you don’t need to do all of the extras that a typical organization project would call for.

Folding: You don’t need to fold baby clothes if you don’t have time for it. You should still be able to find what you’re looking for if the items are in the correct zones.

Containers: Containers are helpful for the different zones, but they’re not necessary. You can easily get by without them if you just want put the clothing items in the general area of the zone. Containers might help maintain the system without as much checking or rearranging, but they’re definitely optional.

Labels: Again, labels are helpful, but not necessary. Labels are most helpful when you have other caretakers using the same system. The more you have your partner or nannies or babysitters dressing your baby or doing the laundry, the more likely you’ll want to implement labels. I just recommend that you use the labels “bigger” and “smaller” rather than trying to label specific sizing categories (ex. “6M” and “9M”). Because clothing sizes can be inconsistent, and then the categories aren’t that helpful. Here is what our drawer labels look like:

Organizing Baby Clothes on Hangers

Now, what about the miscellaneous stuff? How do you organize the baby clothes that don’t have a clear category? I simply hang those in the closet. You may want to hang more or less than I do, and that’s totally fine—every house is different. I just like to hang anything that isn’t “everyday” clothes (ex. nice tops, sweaters, outerwear) and anything that is a full outfit (ex. overalls, coveralls, rompers). And my favorite approach to keeping those hanging baby clothes organized within the closet is to simply use size dividers, like these.

Organizing Baby Clothes in Storage

The other challenge about baby clothes organization goes beyond what’s in the everyday dresser and closet. It’s the clothing in storage. As babies quickly grow out of clothes, you need to do something with all of the clothes that no longer fit them. If you plan to have more kids, then you probably want to keep them for your future children. And in addition to the too-small clothes, you probably have some too-big clothes laying around from either hand-me-downs or future-looking purchases or gifts.

The simplest way to approach this is with a solid set of storage boxes and thorough labeling. You’ll want one box for the next-size-up for your oldest child, and then 1 box per every sizing group of clothing. Once you get into the toddler sizes, you may want two boxes per size, with one for winter and one for summer. I keep these boxes in my kids’ closets. Once a too-small box is filled up, I take it to our deep storage in the basement.

A Real Life Example

We currently have a 3.5-year-old (Jackson) wearing size 4T and a 1.5-year-old (Charlie) wearing sizes 18M through 2T. Here are all of the storage boxes I have to organize all of our baby and toddler clothes.

My Baby & Kids Clothes Storage Box Inventory

Box Label	Box Purpose	Box Location
Preemie	In storage for possible future use	Basement
Newborn	In storage for possible future use	Basement
0-3M	In storage for possible future use	Basement
3-6M	In storage for possible future use	Basement
6-9M	In storage for possible future use	Basement
9-12M	In storage for possible future use	Basement
12-18M	Accepting too-small clothes from Charlie’s room	Charlie’s closet
18-24M	Empty / in-use	Charlie’s closet
2T Summer	Empty / in-use	Charlie’s closet
2T Winter	In storage for Charlie’s future use	Charlie’s closet
3T Summer	In storage for Charlie’s future use	Charlie’s closet
3T Winter	Accepting too-small clothes from Jackson’s room	Jackson’s closet
4T Summer	Empty / in-use	Jackson’s closet
4T Winter	Accepting too-small clothes from Jackson’s room	Jackson’s closet
Next Size Up	Storing Jackson’s future clothes (mostly 5T)	Jackson’s closet

Over this past winter, we had some 3T summer clothes occasionally available for when Jackson needed them, since they were leftover from last summer. As we changed seasons this past spring, I packed up the 3T summer clothes and moved the box to Charlie’s closet, and then rotated in the 4T summer clothes from his “Next Size Up” box at the time. This next fall, I will likely buy 2 more storage boxes for 5T Winter and 5T Summer. It still gets confusing sometimes, but having the labeled boxes readily available in the closets really helps.

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Let me know if you try any of these systems and if they help you organize your baby clothes. Happy organizing!

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If you’re looking for more ways to get organized as a parent, check out the Parenting category of my blog.