How many clothes should I keep?

[Lemondrop99]

Help!

I'm very lucky to have been given around 5 bin bags of hand me down clothes. It's almost entirely 0-3 and 3-6 months. I simply can't see that we can possibly use the amount of clothes we have been given. I've been told to just pick out what we want and pass the rest on/give to charity.

Problem is, there's some lovely clothes in there and I'm struggling to whittle it down. I also don't want to give away too much stuff and regret it.

If you had an excess of clothes and didn't need to spend money on them, how much would you keep? I have a mix of

Short sleeve vests
Long sleeves vests
Sleep suits
T-shirts
Joggers/jeans
Jumpers and hoodies
A ton of baby hats

Is there anything wrong with keeping it all for now and donating it all when your baby grows out of it?

We could. Just a bit of a storage issue. It won't all fit in the furniture we have, and if it sits around in bin bags I can't see it getting used because I'll forget its there!

Could you get any under cot storage boxes? Or just have some stuff in the cot as you don't really use it for the first few months.

I'd keep the lot for now...never underestimate how much washing a newborn can make! We went away for 2 days/1 night when DD was 8 weeks old, packed 10 sleepsuits and vests, she went through those on the first day!!! Had to send DH to find a late opening supermarket to buy a load more! DD wasn't even particularly sicky, so if you get a refluxy baby or one who does explosive leaky poos you might need quite a lot depending on how often you want to be washing stuff. Also, if you lay out the clothes to compare sizes you might find there is quite a difference between stores, so some 0-3 might be more like Up to 1 month size, whereas Next comes up really large, so a bundle labelled 0-3 months might actually last you 5 months (if that makes sense?)

Keep it all! Like pp said the stores are all different sizes, so you won't know what will fit your baby well or when. DS was chubby and I found mothercare and Tesco were quite skinny fits, particularly on the arms. Sainsbury's were long in the leg for DS and the posher brands like Verbaudet and Boden were small all over, so DS was in about 3 different sizes most of his first year!

If it were me I'd probably pass on the jeans, hoodies etc as for that age I prefer sleepsuits or vests and soft trousers, but that is down to personal preference. I also barely used hats as his coat had a hood. I agree that if you have bags full you won't use them - I'd whittle it down to what you can store sensibly.

I would do similar to chameleon above. Keep all the sleepsuits - you can never have too many. And vests were well used too particularly in winter. I wouldn't bother with jeans, even soft ones, at all, for that age. I did dress my boys in legging type trousers though. Hoodies / jumpers - depends how warm your home is. Hats - used maybe one or two in winter only.

Thanks all. I divided everything into age piles etc yesterday. We have over 25 hats alone!!

We've also got a fair amount of new clothes that arrived before I knew the hand me downs were coming. Luckily I hadn't gone mad on the shopping from and only purchased maybe 10-15 items. We've been given a large amount of new clothes as baby shower presents too. I know I'm very lucky, but it's hard to know where to start!

Once everything is washed and dried, I'm going to keep out all the newborn and 0-3 month clothes. I'm going to vacuum pack anything bigger and store it away (might have to go into the loft for now) and rotate later.

I'm going to prioritise nursery wardrobe and drawer space to the new clothes and the hand me downs I like the best, and prioritise the vests and sleepsuits etc. I too find it a bit odd to be trying to put babies that small into jeans and zip up hoodies (we have about 10 pairs of jeans for 3 months and under, including a newborn pair!), so I'll either give these away or keep them somewhere else for now.

There are a few things I'm 99% sure I won't use because either I really dislike them or they're exceptionally tatty. But if I find space, I might hang onto them as I might not be so picky after a poonami!!!

Having sorted, I do see what you mean about different brands coming up different sizes! It's really confusing!

Don't pack away the zip ups too soon. They are very useful for a third layer when its cold. Much better than something that needs to be pulled over head.