Organizing Kid Stuff When Your Family is Still Growing

Hey fellow parents, be honest with me. How many closets in your house are completely packed full of toys your kids don’t play with anymore? How many kitchen drawers are filled with bottles and baby spoons your little ones have outgrown? And how many bathroom cabinets are stuffed with towels that aren’t big enough to dry off your child’s leg after that last growth spurt? 

If you’re not planning on having more kids, the answer is easy…and one I bet most parents could easily sing along with Elsa: let it go. But what if you’re not finished growing your family? 

I see this dilemma all the time with my military clients, whether they’re in a big or small home, have kids spaced close together or far apart, OCONUS or stateside. When you’re in a growing stage of your family’s development, life can mean a lot of unused items that simply need a place to be before the next little one arrives. Storage systems must flex over time as your family grows and grows up. Military families have the added challenge of having to adapt and adjust to each and every duty station during this period. I always say organizing is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. That’s never more true than when dealing with kid stuff. 

We only have one child now—two-year-old Lucas—but we plan to expand our family at some point. Not being sure when we’d want to have our next child, we brought everything with us when we PCS’d to Vicenza, Italy, last summer. The storage situation in our three-bedroom, two-bathroom house here is…well, lacking, even by European standards. We don’t have a single closet to hide anything in, just three drawers in the entire kitchen, and bathroom cabinets so small that Lucas’s toy kitchen honestly has more storage. It’s not common here to have closets, but many families have a small bonus space for storage like a basement area or attic nook. The solutions I settled on for outgrown kiddo stuff in our tiny Italian home may help you even if you find yourself with much more space (and actual closets)! 

Here’s a peek into my own home in Italy and how I handle stuff during the period between babies:

THE WARDROBE

As a born-and-raised Texan, I’m admittedly picky about what gets stored in garages due to the heat and sneaky June bugs, so I opted to store all our future kiddo stuff inside. In the U.S., I was able to store everything in closets, but where to keep it all in a house with no storage? Lucas’s bedroom is nice and spacious, so we headed to Ikea (one of probably six trips in the first few weeks in our house) to purchase a sliding door wardrobe to store his future brother or sister’s things in. It’s on the wall right when you walk in, so it feels like a built-in closet. 

IN-USE ITEMS

I needed the wardrobe to be a storage workhorse, so most of our actively-used items aren’t stored here. Spoiler alert : next month’s blog post is how I organize Lucas’s current clothes, toys, and other stuff in our tiny house! 

THE STORAGE SOLUTIONS

Everything in the wardrobe is divided into categorized bins that are easy to PCS with. I love The Container Store’s weathertight bins for larger storage needs. Their line of shoe and sweater boxes is wonderful because the bins are lightweight, stack well, and are incredibly versatile. 

THE BIG STUFF

These things can be a doozy. As small as newborns are, their stuff can be huge! This is where I started the wardrobe Tetris game: the infant car seat, stroller parts, bouncer, bassinet, travel high chairs, bottle sterilizer, and other large items are stored in the side of the wardrobe we don’t get into often. Pro tip: always, always start with the big things and work your way down to small items when you’re packing anything from boxes to closets! I’m good at my job, but I can only bend time and space so far, so our bulky pack’n’play ended up on top after we phased out using it (perfection is overrated, y’all). 

OUTGROWN CLOTHES

Outgrown clothes are stored in small flexible bags from The Container Store. I love these because they can collapse down if you don’t have as much saved from a particular size and they have built-in label holders to easily identify the contents. Clothes also get very, very heavy in a big plastic bin so this keeps the weight manageable. My maternity clothes are in one of these bags too. Keep the most recent size bag handy so you can easily add things your kids have outgrown. 

OUTGROWN BABY LINENS

With a newborn, you have bassinet sheets, sleep sacks, and swaddles galore! In the wardrobe, I put these in sweater boxes, separated by type. You could also use the bags I like for outgrown clothes. I just ran out and The Container Store doesn’t ship to APOs! If you have linens you wouldn’t necessarily purchase again, these are great to donate (or send to a dog shelter or textile recycling if they’re not in great shape). I only keep the best of the best, and I’ll purchase new to fill in the gaps if needed later. 

OUTGROWN BABY FEEDING STUFF

Many baby feeding items get replaced with each subsequent child, but many can carry over if they’re properly sterilized. Bottles, early feeding gadgets like squeezy-spoons and the bottle warmer, etc. are stored in the three weathertight bins in the bottom back section of the wardrobe.

OUTGROWN TOYS

I saved the hardest one for last. Kids toys can get out of control so dang fast. I often say I wonder how many clients I have gotten throughout my organizing career due to stepped-on legos in the middle of the night! My first piece of advice here is be picky about what you allow into the house to begin with. We love our Lovevery play kit subscription (a curated box of simple, quality toys every two or three months) so we don’t purchase a ton of additional toys for our toddler. To organize the kits, I labeled plastic shoe boxes with the names and age range of each kit. The smaller kit components and play guide fit nicely in each one, then oversized pieces are stored in large weathertight bins. For our non-kit toys, I divided them by material in sweater boxes. When one of these toy boxes is full, that’s my cue it’s time to purge! This storage system can be replicated if you don’t do play kits by labeling bins with the age range you’re likely to use the toys in (use clothing sizes like 3-6 months, 2-3 years, etc.). Use bins as much as possible because it’s a built-in parameter so you don’t keep too much!

By Lauren Weldon May