The conventional wisdom is that kids need lots of clothes, but I’ve found the opposite is true – we find keeping kids’ clothes to a minimum simplifies laundry, keeping track of clothes, etc. (The same is true for adults’ clothes, too – and dishes, and sheets, and and and…you’d think more is better but it just creates more inventory to manage, as The Minimal Mom says.)
Today I’m sharing our toddler’s “capsule” wardrobe from this past summer to give an idea of just how little your kid(s) might be able to get by with.
For reference, my kid gets dirty pretty regularly and we wash clothes almost daily, thanks to cloth diapers and laundry for four people. If you do laundry less frequently, you can adjust accordingly.
Without further ado, the Toddler Capsule Wardrobe for Summer 2020:
2 sets of jammies
4 short-sleeved t-shirts
3 pairs of shorts
2 pairs of lightweight pants
1 long-sleeved t-shirt
A bunch of socks (including my favorite pink ones with the pink John Deere t-shirt and the purple socks with the tie-dye shirt)
Not pictured:
1 sweater not pictured
1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of sandals
1 pink John Deere ball cap for sun protection
Plus 2 pairs of pants and 2 vintage John Deere t-shirts as backup at daycare, including this gem (with some soup on it, pre-laundry):
(Can you tell we are a John Deere family? My uncles farm with them/sell them.)
Everything goes together (more or less), and almost all of this was inherited from our daughter. I thrifted the sloth pajamas and was excited not to have to buy anything more for this stage.
My spouse, however, was a bit skeptical about whether this would stretch far enough – it does look a bit sparse in the drawer! But I persuaded him to give it a try, and we never ran out of clean clothes (as long as we remember to check the dryer/clean clothes hamper, ha).
If you’re nervous about making it work here’s how to try it out without committing:
- determine the number of clothes you think will get your kid through a few wash cycles;
- pick their/your favorites until you reach that number;
- put the rest in a box someplace out of sight and inconvenient to access so you won’t be tempted to break it open and will be forced to go check the dryer and the clean clothes hamper first :)
I have since thrifted a few pairs of toddler pants for the coming cold, but I shouldn’t have even bothered because our friends just dropped off a grocery bag full of clothes passed on from their youngest, all in great shape and many that fit my kid right now. Hurray! Now to get my older kid to go through her clothes before the in-person portion of elementary school starts… she has a lot more opinions about clothing than the baby does :)
If you have little people at home, do you have a minimal or capsule wardrobe for them? If you haven’t tried it out yet, would you ever consider it?
