Laundry Mountain

He has to be eating them

Spring of this year (2025) brought the season of “what do you mean you can’t find any pants?”. My oldest son, 7 years old, had chronic lost pants syndrome. I swear there must have been a black hole in the bottom of his dresser drawer. Every morning it was the same conversation. “Go put on pants please”. “But I don’t have any” or “I can’t find any”. I find it important to make it clear, my son had pants. In fact, he had too many pants. Also, too many shirts, pjs, sweatpants, jackets, and shorts. Too many of, everything. And so did the other two brothers that shared he shares his room with.

Everyone had too many clothes. My husband and I, had so many clothes it was abhorrent. We had clothes we had kept since high school. Things we would never fit again. Let’s be honest, even if we did fit them, we were never going to seriously wear them again, Dad’s don’t get taken seriously in skinny jeans. We all had too much, and it was a mess.

Burn it

We needed a good stockpile of “hand-me-downs” with three boys and one more on the way. What we didn’t need was enough size 2t clothes to dress a small army of toddlers. Thus, the declutter began. I pulled out all the tubs. Yes, ALL THE TUBS. We had probably eight to ten of those large black and yellow storage tubs FULL of kids’ clothes from sizes preemie to 12. I poured each size out on the living room floor and started making cuts. I kept only enough so that one child would have enough for a wardrobe of reasonable size for both seasons (cold and hot) with a little wiggle room on maybe an extra pair of jeans or a couple extra t-shirts.

This is what I wanted:

12mo and up:

• 10-12 t-shirts
• 10-12 long sleeve shirts
• 3 pairs of “real pants”
• 3 pairs of “fun” pants (either Pj sets or just sweatpants)
• 2 pairs of “real” shorts (khaki or cargo shorts)
• 2-3 pairs of “fun shorts”
• 4-5 sleeping shirts/pj sets/footie pjs depending on size/age
• 2 pull over sweatshirts
• 1 zip up jacket
• 1 swimsuit
• 3 pairs of long johns
• and 2 or 3 nice church outfits

Preemie-9mo

• 10-12 sleepers/zip ups
• 10-12 onsies
• 4 pairs of pants
• 2 sweaters/pullover sweatshirts/warm layering shirt
• 1 swimsuit
• 1 or 2 nicer church outfits

Everything else got sold in a garage sale we did over the summer or donated.

For my husband and I, we got purposeful. We kept our nice clothes that fit and put them on a hanging rack in our attic storage. We kept only what would fit in the dresser for each season. The out of season clothes went into under the bed boxes to be rotated with the dresser clothes. We got rid of A LOT.

Peace among the people

By getting rid of 70% of the clothes that we had in the house and getting us down to only what was in season and fit in our drawers, more than just getting dressed in the morning got easier. The insane amounts of laundry I was doing got cut in half! I went from having huge “laundry days” where I was doing 4-6 huge loads of laundry once or twice a week to now. I only do 1-2 loads of laundry every day and they’re tiny loads. My oldest son is able to better manage his own clothes and is able to actually help with the laundry chore now because it’s not so overwhelming to either of us anymore. I give him his pile of clean clothes, and he folds and puts it away.

We got ok with fixing/mending what we had and also knowing when things needed to be replaced. Articles of clothing didn’t magically disappear anymore. Apparently, it’s really hard to lose all your pants when you only have 3 pairs and you can find the bottom of the dresser drawer. We know what we have, and we appreciate it more. Upstairs in the attic we have 7 tubs of clothes organized in the following sizes:

• preemie-12mo
• 18mo-2t
• 3t-5t
• XS (4/5)
• S (6/7)
• M (8)
• L (10) and up

We have a “seasonal” box where we rotate cold and hot season accessories like swimsuits/beach towels/etc. and hats/scarfs/gloves. There is a hanging rack with mine and my husband’s nice clothes hang along with the winter coats during the hot season. We have everything we need, it is organized, and we know where to find it. There is peace in the piles of laundry now instead of absolute chaos.