We have been very fortunate to have such wonderful, giving friends and family. Since Doodle was born, I’ve had to buy him hardly any clothes. We’ve received a large amount of gifts and also a ton of hand-me-downs (including 5 FULL trash bags from one of hubby’s co-workers).
I’ve spent the past two days washing and sorting through everything in anticipation of the growth spurt I see coming (the suddenly very chunky monkey thighs are a dead give away!). I had sorted everything before but realized I didn’t pre-wash the new stuff and baby clothes are notorious for shrinking so I washed and re-sorted.
While waiting for Honeybun’s arrival, I did the same. I washed everything I received at my baby shower and began sorting by size. I realized something very quickly in this sorting process though: baby clothes sizes mean NOTHING! The actual size of clothes varies widely by brand (and sometimes even style!) despite what the tag may say. And don’t let the weight/length labels fool you either, Carter’s brand newborn size which says “5-8 lb” and “up to 21.5 inches” still fits my 13 ½ lb, 25 inch, 3 month old easily.
(6 different brands of 3 months onesies, notice the extreme difference in both length and width!)
So now I sort by actual size, completely disregarding what the tag says (unless I want a good laugh about my 3 year old wearing 12 month clothes). For all-in-ones (such as onesies, sleep-n-plays and footie jamas), I sort by torso length—shoulders to crotch. Pants/shorts/skirts I sort by waistband width and t-shirts I usually sort by width though sometimes really short and wide ones I’ll put with smaller sizes.
Whenever my kids outgrow a set of clothes, I put them in 2 gallon size zip bags and mark it with their name and age. With everything washed and sorted by actual size, whenever a kid grows and needs bigger clothes I can just go grab the next side pile or bag which makes it super easy and I don’t have to worry about them missing out on wearing something because the label was off and they outgrew it without me knowing. (Now if only I could find a way to get Sugarplum into all the long sleeves I have from when Honeybun was the same size in Dublin!)
