How to Organize Kids Clothes: Tips for Keeping Their Closet Neat and Tidy

If you’re a parent, then you know that kids can be messy. And their clothes are no exception! As soon as you think you have them all sorted and organized, they manage to mess it up again.

But don’t worry, we’re here to help.

In this post, we will give you tips on how to organize your kids’ clothes so that their closet is neat and tidy. Follow these tips and your kids will be able to dress themselves in the morning without any trouble!

Organizing Kids Clothes

You’re staring at a closet or dresser full of kids’ clothes and you’re overwhelmed by the mess. We’ve all been there. But there are a few great tips and tricks you can use to make your life so much easier and your kid’s closets so much tidier.

A child’s wardrobe doesn’t have to be perfect

I know it’s tempting to spend time perfecting your child’s closet, but if you spend a few hours organizing kids’ clothes only for all the clothes to become a mess the next time you do laundry, you’re going to get really frustrated.

So instead of focusing on perfection when organizing kids’ clothes, just focus on creating a system that will make life easier for you and your child.

Use Uniform Hangers

I can’t stress this enough but the easiest way to make a closet look neat and tidy is to have all of the same type of hanger throughout the entire closet. It creates a streamlined, uniform look throughout the closet that is pleasing to the eye. This is the best and easiest thing to do that gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

Use dividers in the drawers

One way to do this is by using dividers in the drawers of their dresser or closet. This will help you separate clothes into categories, like short-sleeved shirts, long sleeves, pants, skirts, etc.

This can really help you’d child when they are getting their own clothes out.

You can put clothing bins on a closet shelf (that your child can reach) or get small bins inside the dresser drawers. Then you have multiple areas you can use to organize clothes.

Put socks in one bin, shorts in another, etc. If you’d like to use labeled bins, feel free, but for a child’s room, it isn’t super necessary because your younger kids probably won’t be able to read them. But it could be great for older kids!

File Fold your child’s clothes

I give this tip knowing that it won’t work for everyone but one of my favorite things to do to keep kids’ clothes organized is to file fold their clothes. If you stack clothes on top of one another in a drawer, you’ll most likely forget what is at the bottom and your kids will mess up the folded clothes at the top trying to get to the clothes toward the bottom.

If you file-fold their clothes, they will be able to see every pair of shorts, every pair of pants, and every shirt! They’ll know exactly what they are getting when they pull it out and you reduce the chances of them messing up all of the other foldings in the process.

This method may not be for every family but I’ve folded my kids’ clothes this way for about 2 years now and I would never go back.

Get your kids involved in the process!

If you’re planning on picking out and putting away your kid’s clothes for the foreseeable future, then they might not need a say in how their clothes are organized. But if they are going to be expected to dress and put their own clothing away, then they’ll need to know the system!

Create a system that is easy for them to follow. Like dress shirts or nice clothes hanging in the closet, shorts and pants are put in the one drawer in the dresser, while shirts and socks are in another. Adjust the system and help you’d child implement it so their clothing can stay organized!

Tips for Hand-Me-Down Clothes

Storage space can get tight in a child’s closet, so sometimes you have to be smart with the way you’re organizing clothes.

One way to store hand-me-downs is to use a large bin, chest, or plastic container and keep those clothes somewhere else. I like to keep them on shelves at the top of the closet. That way, the kids can’t get into them and they aren’t taking up other storage space we need, but they are still handy and you have easy access to them.

If you’re saving clothes for a younger sibling, you can always store them in the sibling’s closet. Figure out if you want hand-me-downs in the closest of the oldest child or younger, and then keep season clothing in the other.

Other Clothing Storage Options

Hand-me-down storage isn’t the only reason you might need to put kids’ clothes away for a little while. I just mentioned seasonal clothing, and one of the best ways to organize kids’ clothes is to put away off-season clothes.

Kids’ dressers and closets are often pretty small, and even though kids have small clothes, sometimes they can still get full or messy. So store summer clothes in the winter or winter coats during the hot summer. If your child isn’t going to wear all those clothes in the current season, get them out of the dresser and tuck them away.

You can store them high up in the closet if you have that space or under the bed. If you have a garage, you can DIY shelves high up on the wall and put some bins full of clothing items out in the garage. It’s a great way to save clothes!

Remember that you don’t need to keep kids’ clothing in their rooms. If they aren’t wearing them right now, or you like to buy clothing several months or a year in advance, then find a spot in your home (hall closet, garage, basement, attic, under the bed) where you can get a bit of kid clothes storage.

How to Decide What Clothes to Keep

When deciding what clothes to keep, either for the same child or for a younger child, there are a few questions you should ask yourself.

First, is it in good condition? If not, you shouldn’t keep it. I know that seems like common sense, but sometimes parents hold on to clothes that they think their next child would like or wear, even though it’s getting a little raggedy.

If it’s still in good shape and you have multiple children, then feel free to hold on to it for younger children. But just remember that you can often find decent clothes for a decent price, and that might last a lot longer than hand-me-downs. And, if you’re financially able to, it’s always a good idea to get at least some new clothes for younger siblings. Hand-me-downs aren’t always the most exciting for a younger sibling.

Another thing to ask yourself is if it would be useful to keep it. Will you use them this season or next season? If you know you’ll use the clothes in the near future (like within the next few months or year), then you can definitely store those clothes for the appropriate season.

Outgrown Clothing

At the end of each season or school year, I like to make sure all of the kids’ clothes still fit. Kids grow so quickly, so sometimes t-shirts and pants get too small without us even realizing it!

Check each of your kids’ clothes and look for any outgrown clothes. If there are clothes that no longer fit, it’s time to donate them! It’s also a good idea to see if your kid even likes to wear some of their clothes. You don’t want to hold on to clothing items they don’t even wear!

There are a few different ways you can go about donating your kid’s clothes. You could take them to your local consignment store or secondhand shop.

Another option is if the clothes still look great and you don’t have another child in your family, you can have a clothing swap party with some of your friends and their children. This way, everybody gets rid of the year’s clothes that don’t fit anymore and gets new ones while they are at it!

Organizing kids clothes doesn’t have to be stressful!

I know that it can seem overwhelming and chaotic when you’re staring at dirty clothes on the ground or your child’s clothes in wrinkled balls shoved in drawers, but organizing kids’ clothes doesn’t have to be stressful.

Remember, they don’t have to be perfectly folded, with the drawers perfectly tidy. Just make sure you have their clothes properly separated and categorized so both you and your kid know where everything goes.

Hopefully, these organizational tips have helped you realize that organizing kids’ clothes is a lot less tedious than it seems!