‘Tis the season to dig through tubs of out of season clothes, and pass along or save the items to reuse next year.  If you’re into that sort of thing.  Personally, I get giddy when bags of nice hand-me-downs are passed my way, and just as giddy to pass along our gently used items when we’re done.  The storage and managing of all of this, for four kids, however does NOT make me giddy.  I pretty much dreaded seasonal clothing swap time.My sweet husband built some large bin shelving for me, which is SO nice!  Just being able to pull out a bin when I need to put something away helped tremendously.  But, as you can see above, it all just got tossed into the bin willy-nilly.  All seasons, sizes, and even shoes for each kid were safely stored with all of the order of a tossed salad.  Ugh.  And as hard as I’d TRY to at least get a layered salad going (with sizes and seasons layered in some sort of order), it was *impossible* to keep it that way.  I would rummage around looking for something, and add things to the bin through the year, and when it came time for clothing change: tossed salad.

But I have seen the light, friends!  Thanks to my genius sister…and it’s called GIANT ZIPLOCK BAGS.  These:

That’s right.  You can usually find them on the top or bottom shelf where the ziplock containers and bags are sold in the grocery store.  They are…they are the gold standard of clothing tub organization.  Behold!

Notice the tote handle, the roomy interior, and the write-on label section on the front so I can write “Girls 2T-3T Winter”.  I got some smaller bags in on the action too, to hold socks and smaller items that always ended up tangled around everything else.  I also LOVE the fact that I can seal the bags, so moisture
and anything-creepy-crawley-that-I’d-rather-not-know-about in our
basement is locked out.  It took a while to sort through everything, and several packs of giant ziplock bags, but the finished product is EVERY bit worth it.