I will be the first one to admit that my daughter has way more clothes than my son. I have said it over and over, again, it is more fun shopping for girls than boys. Mainly, because of the variety that girls have. However, there is a problem in having so many options, they tend to get lost in the chaos. I don’t know what happened this pass season, but there seems to have been tons of sales and I seem to have visited all of them. Amber had drawers overflowing with cute long sleeve tops, jeans hanging by the mile and skirts by the ton. What is the problem with all of this? Well, it seems she might have been slightly overwhelmed and tended to wear the same few outfits over and over again.
This pass Saturday, I had decided, even though I am only in my 20th week, to organize Amber’s clothes and switch around the seasons. This is easy enough to do, especially with our weather that changes with the wind, because Amber has a fairly large closet that is divided into 2 areas. We have a low rod, which is great for small kids to have a choice over their clothes and a much higher rod for long dresses, costumes, and storage, but readily available out of season clothes. In my organizing mission I was determined to make room in Amber’s dresser. Since she was the only one occupying the room for 7 years, it was easy to spread out a bit, but the upcoming birth of another daughter some rearranging was in order. I had decided to hang all of Amber’s shirts. And she had many of them. Then I realized that she rarely wore what was in the dresser. Sure she had a few items that she always went to, but she rarely wanted to sort through the stacks of folded shirts to find something to wear. It appeared to be easier to just look in the closet and pick something from there. After hanging all of her clothes, I was shocked at how much room was left in the dresser. Although, now her closet is packed and I am wondering how to fit another girl’s worth of cute dresses in there. I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it.
I, also, came to realize that my daughter may have more clothes than me. Like I said it is easy to buy girls’ clothes, because of the variety. I mean how many navy shorts can one boy have? I will soon found out, because while organizing and packing away out grown clothes in Sam’s room, I discovered the poor boy doesn’t have much for this upcoming summer. So, I have decided that there will be a halt to purchasing anymore clothes for Amber at the moment, saved for a few special occasion dresses, like Easter and for a wedding we will be attending in a couple of months. Besides the girl simply does not need anymore clothes. There is another little girl that needs to be outfitted, but hopefully not to the extent of her sister.
That brings us to another dillemma. Thinking that after my son was born we were done having children, I did something very stupid, I gave away some of Amber’s clothes. Stupid, because my gut told me not to and I really loved those clothes. I don’t save many things, but I do like saving special items of the kids’ clothes for my walks down memory lane. I don’t know if that is weird, but I do feel I put a lot of care into finding clothes for my kids that I would like to keep them. Anyway, I have seem to have given away the first year of Amber’s clothes and it hurts. Not just because I don’t have those memories, I mean I do have pictures, but it would have been nice to have our second daughter wear the same adorable clothes as her big sister. All this means, is there will be more shopping to be done and new clothes to search out. I already have one consignment appointment marked on my calendar. Since finding out the sex of our third and, definitely, final child I have begun saving Amber’s clothes, again. It was getting to the point that our attic would be converted to some kind of huge memorial closet. Not everything gets saved, but the especially cute and non-stained go right into an x-large Ziploc bag that sits at the bottom of the closet. I am still saving Sam’s clothes, because it seems I just can’t part with them, but there will have to be a stopping point.
The lesson in all of this is that yes, you can have too many options, especially a young child and yes, you can go too far. The first step is admitting you have a problem…Okay, I don’t think it is that bad, but seriously I think Amber has close to 20 long sleeve shirts and we live in an area that is cold maybe 2 months out of the year. On the bright spot we have a bunch of empty dresser drawers that are just screaming, “Fill me!” Okay, maybe I do need some help.
