This week is our first week back to school, and I’m joining 21 other bloggers in a 5 Days of Organizing and Cleaning series.

• Monday: It Starts at Home
• Tuesday: Supplies and Gear
• Wednesday: Food and Meal Planning
• Thursday: Simple Wardrobes
• Friday: Fresh Routines and Learning Lifestyles.

I’ve posted on and off all summer here and over on the Walking in High Cotton Facebook page about my frustrations with finding appropriate clothes for the Ladybug. Modest clothes. Clothes that let her express herself without exposing herself. It’s harder than I would have imagined! I’ve also posted before about the horrible, no good, really bad laundry monster in this house–and the concept of less clothing means less laundry. So simple, so true!

Here in Virginia, we have 4 seasons. But on the farm, we tend to wear long pants and sometimes even long-sleeve shirts almost year round, so our summer wardrobes are very small. August is the perfect time for us to sort and purge clothes–before heading out to buy anything new!

Anyone else deal with leaning towers of laundry? This was both boys before I just purged 3 bags of stuff.

WHAT WE KEEP

We use weekly, hanging, closet organizers for the kiddos’ school clothes. These are wonderful! Worth every penny–although I think you could come up with a less expensive way to separate out 5 days of clothes. The point is that you fill them on Sunday evening and you don’t have to think about clothes again until Saturday morning when you’re doing laundry. The kids can reach it themselves to “load” clothes for the week and get their entire outfit out to get dressed without help (and no missing socks!) every morning.

Basically, each child has this:

• 5 days of school clothes
• 2 days of weekend/work clothes
  
• 2 sets of church clothes
  
• 1 pair of boots, 1 pair of sneakers, 1 pair of church shoes (Plus or minus the Ladybug’s 2700 pairs of cheap summer flip-flops that just seem to appear sometime in June.)

The Ladybug has a bit more because, well, she’s a girl. And because she has to have dresses and skirts for school, but also needs play and work clothes at home. And because we have to do some layering to make modern clothes meet our standards.

{Just click here to get a link to a printable boy and girl simple wardrobe checklist!}

I wish we could go with a little less, but this is what works for us right now going to school outside the home. And yes, I absolutely do purge down to these numbers even if there’s nothing wrong with the clothes. Sometimes it’s hard to let go because you just never know when they might need 27 monster truck tee-shirts or those 4 pairs of adorable flannel pj (even though they hate to wear them) but pitch it in the donate pile! You’ll love it later. Trust me.

{BTW, Sherri over at From Our Front Porch is doing an entire 5 Day series on Organizing Kid Clothes. Stop by, pin it, it’s good stuff!}

Normally only church shoes are up here (sneakers and boots go in the shoe basket in the mudroom), but this pictures was as we were getting set for the first week of school and we had school shoes upstairs for that first morning.

WHERE WE KEEP IT

The boys have one plastic, 3-drawer dresser in their closet for hand-me-downs. The drawers are sorted by size and I only keep up to 3 sizes bigger than where we are right now. Each bedroom also has one under-the-bed box to keep summer clothes or some winter clothes between seasons. The Ladybug has her own dresser and the boys share a dresser, with the drawers split with these niffy dividers. (Love them!!) Most of their clothes are usually in their closet hangers or in the hamper.

WHAT TO BUY

Uniforms–we wore uniforms for several years and I love them. LOVE them. I think all schools should go to them–for lots of reasons, but really mostly because they are SO DARN EASY!

Here’s some tips for uniforms with pre-school and elementary kids:

• Go with dark colors if you can. The khaki never holds up as well as the navy. (Um…never buy white polos for boys. Period.)
• The “double knee” pants barely made it an extra 3 months with our boys. I wouldn’t consider it worth the extra $4-$8/pair.
• Same with the extra for the adjustable waist. The length is only going to fit them for a year anyway. A straight elastic waist will be fine and you can hand-sew a tuck in the side easily if it’s too big (and take it out easily with a seam ripper if the next one down the line needs more room).
• Buy unisex polos so you can hand them down. They will last that long–we have some from French Toast going on their 4th year and still look like new!
• Buy used! Talk to your school or other local private schools–there’s always someone having a uniform swap and sale. And since everyone’s wearing the same thing, none of the kids will know or care if they’re used as long as they’re in good condition.
• Buy short-sleeves and just get some long-sleeve undershirts for the winter. You can get a 5 pack of long-sleeve tees for the same price as ONE long sleeve polo–and then they can take it off if the heat in the building is wacky.
• Buy a sweater–again, more versatile with short sleeves than investing in long-sleeved tops.

We use over the door hangers for out-of-season clothes since the kids can’t reach them. Since they have to keep their backpacks downstairs, they also usually have 1-2 old play ones (you know, for playing spies) that get hung up here too.

Non-Uniforms–we aren’t wearing uniforms this year, but we do have a strict dress code. The Ladybug must wear skirts or dresses, knee-length when sitting. The boys can wear jeans, as long as they are clean, neat, and solid colored. Didn’t seem to difficult–at first–then I was introduced to “grunge washed” denim. {Sigh}

Here’s a few tips for keeping simple wardrobes for young children:

• Purge what doesn’t fit before buying anything!
• Check your hand-me-downs before buying anything! (Ahem, lesson learned here…this step will be so much easier if you pack them by size to begin with!)
• While you’re at it, purge what won’t fit next summer before you pack summer clothes away! Size 4 shorts fit Speedracer now, but I know they won’t next summer (and I know we have plenty of size 5s too). We’re tossing them in the donate pile now.
• Focus mostly on short-sleeves. It’s easy to add a long-sleeve tee underneath of just about anything for chilly weather but the kids are inside the majority of the day and have a jacket or coat for outside time. Short sleeves are cheaper and more versatile.
• Don’t buy too early. I focus on our state’s Tax Free shopping days as my clothes deadline. Kids grow fast and they grow in spurts. I like to wait until we’re as close to the start of school as possible before committing our funds to a specific size because I am not buying new pants in April for two more months of school!
• Especially shoes–wait until the end of the summer!!
• Look for underwear, socks, and undershirts at club stores like BJs and Costco.
• Denim will last, buy the adjustable waist!
• Speaking of denim, by classic cuts and colors. Even girls. Maybe especially girls. Save yourself the headache–classic jeans go with everything. Sparkly skinny jeans with hello kitty on them do not.
• If you have a girl, think about making some of her clothes–we are, and it doesn’t have to be hard. You can get a custom fit (size 6 waist, size 10 length, we can do that!) not to mention its great momma-daughter time!
• Keep a running list of what you’re looking for and share it with family. Our family loves to buy the kids cute clothes–tell them what you need!

Here’s a new skirt I just made the Ladybug on Sunday afternoon. (Wow, pleats are SO much easier than ruffles!)

Tomorrow I’ll be wrapping up our 5 Day series by talking about refreshing our daily routines at the beginning of the school year and some of the easy ways we are incorporating a learning lifestyle across our entire house to encourage our little scholars to enjoy their new skills. This goes hand in hand with the idea of whole-hearted learning, living books, and nature study that we’ve been using all summer long.