Semi Minimalist Wardrobe for Kid's Part 2

In part 1 I shared how I came up with what I thought would be an adequate, but simple, wardrobe for the kids. If you have not read that part, I suggest going to read it.

Once I knew where I was going, I just had to take the steps to get there.

1. Divide

I wash laundry once a week, so decided to do par down their wardrobe instead of just folding and putting away. From the massive pile, of newly washed clothes plus anything I didn't need to wash, I took out any clothes that the sharpie found in the wash a few days ago, anything that didn't fit well, anything that was dark and far too comfy with white lint, and almost anything that wasn't on par with season.

Honestly, what was left was pitiful, and clearly showed me why it was a struggle to dress than even among the sea of little shirts, skirts, and pants.

We also went through Christopher's clothes and basically paired down what we didn't like as he had so many usable clothes.

2. Fit Them In

Then I had the task of fitting the paltry pile into the wardrobe model as well as I could. I rearranged, and rearranged some more, so that I would need to purchase as few things as possible to finish the wardrobe.

3. Figure out what you need to get

Since we weren't starting with a lot of practical clothes, we did have some purchasing we had to do. For kids with lots and lots of clothes, simply paring down might be enough.

Even if you have enough clothes to build a wardrobe from, I would suggest changing out socks if socks are a constant struggle for you, like they are for us. Our girls have almost the same foot size, so we are getting rid of all their hard to match random socks and replacing with 20+ pairs of white socks in the exact same style. That way pairing will only be finding two socks not finding the two purple panda socks from the haystack sock stack.

For any partially finished outfit, I wrote down what we needed to complete it (our shopping list is below).

4. Shop

We headed to walmart and target for this, and will hit up target again as we saw socks we wanted there and a second hand store for some dressier clothes for cheaper. Honestly, my kids are rough on clothes and nicer clothes stain as quickly as walmart clothes, so while we try to make high quality purchases (often second hand or from discount stores) we went with straight up cheap this time.

Here is an example of our list, complete with what was low priority.  (Pictured adjustments were made as we shopped).

Valerie Needs: 

20 pairs underwear (low, when potty training)

10+ pairs purple socks (low) 20 pairs of white socks to share with Natalia
shirt to go with rose skirt (velvety red, black, white, or pink) Church outfit

shirt to go with fuzzy dot pants (light green, yellow, pink, or purple)

shirt to go with black dot pants (nothing too dark) Simple pant and shirt outfit
cardigan to go with red shirt and white and black pants 

Natalia Needs:
Skirt/Pant that goes with red shirt 
black or dark brown shirt to go with green jumper A shirt to go with jeans
A pair of jeans
a tunic shirt to go with jeggings (low)
10+ pairs pink socks (low)

Christopher Needs:
Nice Button Down Shirt (low)10+ white socks (low)

Because we weren't going to second hand clothing stores (nothing cheaper than walmart around here) we took the clothes we needed to find matches for with us, which made it much easier!

All in all, getting everything on the list will cost us about $75 (thanks partially to hitting up sales and clearance) which I think is well worth turning their piles of clothes, into a well thought out wardrobe.

One update to the minimalistic wardrobe model I mentioned the other day, we are going to get Valerie 3-4 super basic shirts that can round out most of her outfits when the shirt she is wearing gets messy. She messes up shirts far quicker than pants.