Children's Clothing and the Magic Number

How much clothing does an average kid need? Of course it depends on your climate and the activities your child is in and how often you do laundry. I like to think of it in terms of a magic number. Everyone's number can be different. I like 8. That means I can do laundry once a week if I feel like it. We can go on a week vacation and wear different clothes every day.  In a perfect world, it would be 4 and my kids would wear items of clothing more than once, but you never know when one kid will have an accident every day of the week and running out of things to wear and scrambling to wash pants late the night before school is not a simple life. Being prepared is. So I choose 8 - with other random numbers thrown in. Yours is probably different. It's not about what number  - but having a systematic way of evaluation what you actually "need".

• 8 pairs of underwear
• 8 pairs of identical socks (I have a separate kind for each kid, and back ups in a storage box - those socks tend to run away!)
• 8 pairs of pants or shorts, depending on the season
• 8 short sleeve or long sleeve shirts and/or dresses, depending on the season
• 3 sweaters and/or sweatshirts
• 3 pj's (wear 3 times then wash)
• 1 sports uniform if needed
• 1 practice for sport outfit (this could increase as practices do)
• 1 dress up outfit (or more if you dress up for church - ours is casual)
• 1 swimsuit and 1 towel
• 1 winter coat
• 1 fall/spring coat
• 1 set hat/gloves/scarf
• 1 umbrella
• 1 baseball hat
• 1 belt
• 1 pair of running shoes
• 1 pair dress shoes
• 1 pair flip flops
• 1 pair of boots

Hopefully, this could all fit in each kid's suitcase. I like to frame things in the idea of how mobile we are - it makes me feel free like we could up and move to the Bahamas at a moment's notice if we wanted to.  I love having this list when seasons change or when school clothes shopping time comes around. I can quickly see what is needed or when I need to trim down their wardrobe which is often the case as we get most of our clothes as hand-me-downs or as gifts.  I like to donate or sell the extras, but I always make sure to keep the larger items for later and I always have an emergency outfit ready in the car (which is usually one of those 'larger' outfits). Man, do we use those emergency outfits!  Keeping the clothes pared down also keeps down laundry and keeps their rooms tidier. With basically 8 outfits per kid, they can easily pick out their own clothes the night before school as well. I try to keep their clothes color coded or write their initial on the back tag for outfits that match each other.  This also helps when my daughter is begging for new clothes and I can honestly say, "You don't need any clothes, sweetie."  And, how fun it is when they do need clothes, it's like we're on a mission instead of "sport shopping" and I know we aren't wasting our money on something we don't need!