How to Organize Baby Clothes (in 9 Practical Steps)

Are you preparing to welcome your new baby and wondering how in the world to organize baby clothes? Rest assured, there is a way to keep things organized in a sustainable way. Read on to learn how.

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Baby clothes are some of the cutest pieces of clothing on the planet. They’re just so tiny and adorable! But when you’re the one who has to wash, fold, and organize them, they can start to seem significantly less fun.

That’s why you need a system. But the goal of organizing baby clothes isn’t to have it be perfect; it’s to keep you sane. You need something that is functional and EASY TO MAINTAIN.

This will certainly look different for every parent, but today I want to share what works for my family, plus some bonus tips and tricks.

So let’s get right to it. Here’s how to organize your baby clothes.

If you need to know how many baby clothes to get, check out this blog post first: How Many Baby Clothes Do I Need? (and 5 Important Tips).

Organizing Step-by-Step

To make things simple, let’s break the basics up into a step-by-step process.

Step 1: Get rid of some.

That’s right. Step number one isn’t about organizing; it’s to throw away, give away, or sell some of the clothes you’ve received. Chances are you’ve gotten loads of baby items for free from family members and friends, either new or used.

And while babies often go through several outfits a day, you don’t need 3 bins of 0-3 month clothes to make things work.

Dedicate an afternoon to going through everything you have and…

Throw away used items that are stained or torn
Make a pile of items you just don’t like (lots of words, obnoxious prints, a certain color, etc.)
Make a pile of things you want to keep

With that last point, I recommend you get a little choosy about what to keep. Even if something isn’t stained or isn’t a horrible color, you don’t have to keep it. You want your baby clothes to be manageable, and limiting quantity can help with that.

Finally, you may want to consider keeping things neutral, at least with onesies. If you have mostly white or gray onesies, for example, it doesn’t matter if the pants are bright orange or pink-polka-dotted; you’ll have a onesie to match.

Once you’ve finished your piles, put all the don’t-keep items in a bag to take to a thrift or consignment store. Leave the do-keep items for the next steps.

Step 2: Wash the clothes.

Once you’ve sorted through all the clothes, it’s time to get them ready for your baby to wear. Put them all (the do-keep ones) through a load in the wash.

For you ingredient-conscious mamas, I recommend you go with a high-quality laundry detergent. Babies’ skin is sensitive and chemicals in laundry detergent can irritate it easily. Even “baby” laundry detergent often has less-than-great ingredients.

There are lots of good brands out there. Right now, I use ECOS for all my laundry. It’s made with plant-based ingredients, is eco-friendly, and doesn’t have any questionable additives. (And it’s pretty cheap, compared to other “clean” brands!)

Step 3: Separate by size.

Now that your baby clothes are clean, it’s time to start the actually “organize” part. First, separate the clothes by size. Make different piles for newborn, 0-3 months, 3-6 months, etc.

If you have items labeled as one specific month (e.g. 3 months) instead of a range, I recommend putting that with the smallest size range that it fits in (e.g. 0-3 months, not 3-6 months).

The other tricky thing here is that different brands have different sizing, even when they’re labeled the same. A 6-month outfit from one brand may be more like a 3-month outfit from another.

To get these outfits in the right pile, you can either pick a brand to go off of (like Carter’s, which some moms say run true) or you can recruit an experienced mom friend of yours to help you estimate what size something really is.

Step 4: Put too-big clothes in storage bins.

If you’re doing this while pregnant, you’re going to want the newborn and 0-3 month clothes out first. So the rest can go into storage!

If you have a bit of cash to spare, you can buy nice plastic bins—transparent if you prefer—to store the extra clothes. If you’re wanting to save a bit of money, just use clean boxes. (Diaper boxes work great, if you have any of those.)

Keep the clothes separated by size. Have a box for 3-6 months, 6-9 months, etc.

And don’t forget to label! The most important thing to do when organizing baby clothes for storage is to LABEL THOROUGHLY.

If you’re using cardboard boxes, you can write on them with a sharpie. With plastic bins, you can use a sticker label or you can put a piece of paper on the inside facing out (if the bin is transparent).

I recommend labeling with both the size and the gender, so, for example, “3-6 month girl clothes.”

In this first year, your baby will move up the sizes quickly, so you may want to keep the boxes in the nursery closet, rather than the garage or long-term storage.

Step 5: Decide where to put what.

Now that you have just the clothes you need out right now, it’s time to decide where you want to put everything. Most parents get a dresser of some sort. Then, depending on if your baby has their own room, you may have closet space for them, too.

Before putting anything away, figure out where you want each type of item. I keep everything in a dresser right now because my baby girl doesn’t have a closet. The drawers are big and we don’t have a lot of clothes so a dresser is plenty of space.

If you have a closet and a dresser you may decide to organize things this way:

In the dresser: onesies/tops, pants/shorts, pajamas and sleep sacks, socks and miscellaneous
In the closet: dresses, coats and jackets, overalls/rompers, things that wrinkle easily

Get Specific

Once you know generally where things will go, it’s time to get specific. The more specific you are about what goes where, the less you have to think about where to put it after it’s been used and the less work it is to find something when you want it.

In the dresser, there’s a few elements to this.

First, plan to put your most-used items in the top drawer and the least-used items in the bottom. This will probably mean onesies and pants/shorts go in the top and miscellaneous items like shoes, bows, etc. go in the bottom.

Depending on the size of the dresser drawers, you may want to designate each drawer for one thing (e.g. only onesies or only pants). That will help you form a habit of what goes where. I didn’t use this particular tip because the dresser we use has only a few, large drawers.

Second, develop a system within each drawer. Specifically, have things ordered from smallest to biggest. If you have 3-9 month clothes out currently, keep 3-month clothes on the left and 9-month clothes on the right.

You can even label the drawer so everyone who dresses your baby or does laundry is on the same page.

Instead of labeling “3 month” or “9 month,” though, simply label the left side of the drawer “smaller” and the right side “bigger,” so you don’t have to change the labels as your baby grows.

If you do this, just make sure to shift clothes to the left every time you add a bigger size.

Step 6: Buy or make organizers.

While separators or bins aren’t absolutely necessary, they can certainly help. My husband has always enjoyed making things out of cardboard, so he cut boxes into custom-fit separators for our baby’s dresser.

Here’s what that looks like:

dresser drawer with baby dresses, pjs, etc. and cardboard organizers

dresser drawer with baby clothes and cardboard organizers

Using separators like this is helpful when you’re keeping multiple types of clothing in the same drawer, like we do. We have separate rows for short-sleeve onesies, long-sleeve onesies, pants, shorts, sweaters, pajamas, and more.

You could use small bins the same way.

Even if you decide to let things mix a bit (by not using separators) you may want a bin or two for things like socks, bows, bibs, and other smaller items.

Step 7: Fold and organize by type.

Now it’s time to put the clothes away. As I’ve already alluded to, you’ll want to organize baby clothes by type (short-sleeve onesies, pants, etc.). If you do this as you fold, you don’t risk forgetting what’s what and having to unfold something to check.

I like to fold baby clothes in fourths, like this:

Folding onesies in fourths can save space while also making it easy to see the pattern and color when choosing an outfit. (Plus, it makes them small enough to fit in shallow drawers.)

TIP: If you have plain white onesies, try keeping them separate. You can roll them or lay them flat. But by keeping them separate, you never have to wonder if you’re grabbing a mostly-white onesie with something on the front or an actual all-white onesie.

I fold pants in fourths too, for the same reasons. Some parents prefer to lay pants flat.

Pajamas get loosely folded and placed in their correct row, as do sweaters and dresses.

If you have closet space, now is the time to hang your items there. You can use nifty dividers like these to keep sizes separate. If you have miscellaneous items you don’t want to keep in the dresser, try getting an over-the-door pocket organizer to go on the back of the closet door.

Step 8: Get a basket for too-small items.

As your baby grows, some items of the current size will be too small sooner than others. To avoid a drawer full of too-small clothes or, alternatively, having to get a storage box out over and over, keep a basket in the closet specifically for too-small clothes of the current size.

If you try to put a onesie on your baby and realize it doesn’t fit anymore, toss it in the basket rather than back in the drawer. Then, once the whole lot is too small, you can empty the basket into a new storage bin and label it.

Step 9: Don’t forget about diaper storage.

Finally, as you organize your baby clothes, make sure you have a plan for where to put diapers and wipes.

Chances are, your dresser is also your changing table. Because of that, some people recommend keeping the top drawer available for diapers and wipes. But I don’t like having to reach into a drawer while changing a dirty diaper.

Instead, I made a hanging basket to keep diapers in and I keep my wipes on the top of the dresser.

You can buy hanging diaper caddies with lots of storage if you want to use a similar option.

Baby Clothes…Organized!

How do you feel now that your baby clothes are organized? Hopefully, you feel like there’s a little less chaos in your life and like you now have a sustainable solution for baby clothes.

If you’re wanting more tips and tricks to make caring for a baby easier, check out these blog posts:

Until next time,

Allison

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How to Organize Baby Clothes (in 9 Practical Steps)