It’s around 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. My daughter Lily comes in the living room where I’m playing blocks with Luke. She has on a red ‘twirly’ dress, plastic high heels, and Christmas socks.
Forty minutes later Lily does pirouettes in her blue sparkly princess dress in the kitchen as she sings ‘Jingle Bells’. (I’m not sure why, but my kids are obsessed with that song.)
It’s now around 1:00 p.m. on that same Tuesday. Lily shouts from her room ‘Mom, my shirt is stuck!’ I walk into her room just as she is pulling down her floral top over her floral leggings. She completes the look with a pastel necklace.
Three hours later, Lily walks out of her room with black leggings and a black long sleeved top on. Her hair is sticking up from her nap and she will later change back into her floral leggings and top and then later on into her blue flowered swimsuit and finally into her favorite stained Valentine pajamas right before bed.
My girl loves clothes. She cannot get enough of twirly dresses and matching her momma and high heels. She is easy to buy for because a dress or a new pair of socks make her giddy. Although my girl loves curating outfits and creates a laundry pile the size of our family laundry basket day in and day out, she doesn’t have a ton of clothes. She wears what she loves everyday (all of what she loves). And it’s usually the same five or six outfits.
Those floral leggings get worn at least every other day. The two twirly dresses she has right now are both her favorites. For awhile her drawers were full of pants and shirts and tutus and dresses and skirts. And she could care less. Day in and day out she pulls out the same things to tug over her head and pull on her legs. Even my girl-y girl who loves clothes is implementing a capsule wardrobe without even knowing it.
Capsule wardrobes for kids just make sense. Kids, especially young kids, outgrow clothes almost every season. They will wear something for 3-6 months, maybe 9 months or a year if you live in a temperate climate and then never be able to fit into it again. A wardrobe consisting of pieces that can be mixed and matched allows kids to wear their favorites everyday without dressers and closets stuffed full with clothes.
Although I can be a number person at times, I don’t think there is a magic number of clothes a child should have in a closet. Gathering the ‘right’ number of clothes will look different for each child and each family. Maybe your child needs clothes for soccer or baseball or dance. Maybe your child needs pieces to meet a uniform requirement at school as well as clothes for outside life and activities. Each family’s lifestyle will determine how much is enough.
But, I think our kids can live with less than we think. Choosing a capsule wardrobe for your child or children each season makes life a bit easier with less choices, less stuff, less money spent, and more of wearing what they love everyday.
Will you implement a capsule wardrobe for your littles this spring? I would love to hear your thoughts.
2 thoughts on “How many clothes do my kids need?”
Comments are closed.