After Little Man was born, I soon realized that we were going to have to find a way to store all of the clothes he outgrew. We knew we wanted another child one day, so we wanted to save his clothes in case we had another boy. At first, I put his clothes into big tupperware containers and put them in the attic. But, after seeing a lot of yellowed things at consignment sales, I started to worry that his clothes would yellow, too, because tupperware containers are not airtight.
Do you remember those cheesy 90's Space Bags commercials? Bonus points for the British accent. ;)
Well, we tried them and they really work! We've been passing Little Man's clothes along to a friend, and even after being in the attic for over 3 years, the clothes come out looking just like they did when we put them in. No yellowing!
Here's my process for storing kids clothes:
Keep Upcoming Sizes Visible- Clothes that are the next season and the next size(s) up get stored in tupperware containers on the kid's closet shelf until they grow into them. I like to use see through containers so I can remember what clothes they have and won't buy duplicates.
Fold, Bag, Seal- When the bag is full, I dump the clothes out and fold them as flat as possible and insert them back into the bag neatly. Then, I use my vacuum to suck the air out of the bag.
Throw in the Attic and Celebrate- We put the bags into the attic and we're done! Our attic was starting to overflow with Space Bags, so Jeremy built a Space Bag holder out of some 2x4's in the corner of the attic. Now, we can stand the bags up in a neat row! You could also use empty boxes to stand the bags up in if you needed an easy and cheap way to organize a lot of bags and didn't want to build anything.
My sweet Hubby snapped this picture with his phone after he finished building. He knew I'd want a picture for my blog. Sweet, right?! He's a keeper!
-Don't overfill the bags. The first few bags I filled, I overstuffed them and they eventually lost the vacuum seal. The clothes stayed nice and didn't yellow, but after the vacuum seal was gone, they took up a lot more space. But, when I, ya know, follow the directions on the box (ha!) and don't overfill them, they keep their seal for years! If you look closely in the picture above, you can see that some of the bags are not vacuum sealed anymore. This picture is from a year ago before we figured out that we were over stuffing the bags. :)
-Ensure properly sealed. The bags come with a little slider to seal the bags. I've found that after sliding it across the bags, I get a better seal if I go back and squeeze the seal together with my fingers.
I hope this helps as you swap out those summer clothes for fall clothes! Unless you're our Florida friends and family. Then you just roll your eyes and slam the laptop in rage because Florida has no fall. I'm truly, truly sorry. But, don't worry, you'll be swimming in the ocean on Christmas day so it'll all even out in the end. ;)
This is NOT a sponsored post! Ziploc has no idea who I am!
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Good info.
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