I don’t know about you, but I don’t use my closet for much other than storage. And by storage, I mean there are shoes in there that I haven’t worn for ten years. We wanted to do it differently with our kids because babies have SO. MUCH. STUFF. Two kids and a few rooms later, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what works and doesn’t work. Here are my top baby closet ideas that’ll hopefully help you up your organization game.
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BABY CLOSET IDEAS – CLOTHING ORGANIZATION
If you’re looking for ideas on how to organize baby clothes – I’m gonna be honest that it’s HARD. I mean, the clothing itself is SO small, that keeping it organized takes a lot of patience and persistence.
Your best bet is to use a dresser or a closet organizer system. There are some easy-ish ways to DIY this without having to buy a dresser. We’ll talk about how to organize baby clothes in drawers, as well as other alternatives for those of you without a dresser or organization system.
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HOW TO ORGANIZE BABY CLOTHES IN DRAWERS
If you HAVE drawers to begin with – that’s half the battle (seriously though – we didn’t have one with our second child and it was a LOT harder to keep track of her clothing)! Here are some tips and tricks to help you organize baby clothes in drawers.
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- Grab some drawer organizers. Make sure that you grab some that are adjustable because you can use these for years.
- Keep baby’s dresser in the closet to save space – especially if your baby’s room is rather small.
- Use your dresser as a changing table, and keep one drawer for extra diapers, wipes, and burp cloths.
- Fold your baby onesies like this. This will save space and keep everything looking neat.
- If you’re going to purchase a changing table (here’s a list of all of my nursery essentials) I recommend grabbing something that doubles as a dresser. We did this with our oldest, and it was one of the best decisions we made. We were able to keep ALL of our extra diapers, wipes, and other diapering equipment in the drawers underneath.
- Alternatively, grab a changing table/dresser that has a spot for a hamper. This will be a BIG space-saver AND you’ll be changing your baby’s clothing on the changing table anyway – so this just makes sense. I really liked this one.
Here is how we decided to organize baby clothes in drawers for our oldest daughter. We did things a bit differently (and NOT as efficiently) with our second.
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- Top drawer: socks, hats, and her jammies. Each type of jammy had its own section, which meant one-piece jammies were in one section, and pants/shirt jammies were in another section.
- Second drawer: White onesies, colored onesies, long-sleeved onesies, and one piece outfits.
- Third drawer: Shirt and pant outfits, extra pants and shorts
- Fourth drawer: Some clothing for the next size up (I usually couldn’t fit EVERYTHING, but I liked to have some things out in case she switched sizes and I didn’t have time to switch it out right away).
- Fifth drawer: Extra receiving blankets and burp cloths.
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BABY CLOSET IDEAS – HOW TO ORGANIZE BABY CLOTHES IN A CLOSET WITHOUT A DRESSER
If you have SPACE but no dresser, you can still organize baby’s clothing. You’ll need to pick up SOME supplies unless you want baby’s clothing to stay in a big heap at the bottom of the closet. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need a fancy organizer, but you’ll want at least something. Here are a few tips.
- Getting a closet organization system will be easiest. Scroll down to see my recommendations.
- Use something like these collapsible storage bins on a closet shelf to keep baby’s hats, gloves, and socks in, or use them for ALL of baby’s clothing.
- Buy a couple of these to keep baby’s small clothing organized. Foldable AND budget-friendly.
- Grab an over the door shoe organizer for baby’s closet door and keep small items like hats, hair accessories, and socks in them. We kept onesies in ours.
- Use clothing dividers when you hang up clothing, and use them to divide by TYPE of clothing (I’ll explain why we aren’t separating by size later).
- For a budget-friendly baby closet idea, pick up these storage drawers. Label the drawers (here’s a tutorial on how to do that with fabric storage containers), and use this in place of a dresser!
- Grab one of these to put in the bottom of the closet. The baby closet idea will help give you more room to keep things organized.
- Instead of an over the door shoe organizer, grab something a little bigger. This over the door organizer comes with baskets, which will give you substantially more room to work with.
- Pick up some of these little baskets to line the wall of the closet horizontally underneath where the closet rod is. Then all of your clothing is SUPER easily accessible and easy to keep organized. Attach them to the wall with these hooks.
BABY CLOSET ORGANIZER SYSTEMS
If you landed on this post because you’re wondering how to organize a baby closet, a closet organizer system is an easy solution.
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What is a baby closet organizer system you ask?
It’s basically the fancy organizing system you see in closets that include some rods, shelves, drawers, and other accessories. Many homes come with built-in closet organizers nowadays, but not all of us are so lucky.
The other nice thing about these storage systems is they don’t NEED to be in a closet. Some of us just don’t have a spare closet – in which case you can keep these against the wall. Just remember to anchor them to the wall so that the baby closet organizer system doesn’t end up falling on your little one. Seriously.
If you don’t have a closet organizer for your baby, we’ve picked some of our favorites that you can order and have shipped to you.
AmazonBasics Expandable Storage Organizer
Honestly? This storage system is NOT a pretty option. Regardless, it’s budget-friendly, durable, comes with wall-mounting hardware, AND it gets good reviews on Amazon.
This expandable closet organizer comes with two hanging rods (with adjustable widths) and 10 adjustable height shelves.
Each shelf can hold 100 pounds, which is pretty impressive. The hanging rods can hold between 75-150 pounds, so this awesome baby closet idea will GROW with your baby.
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ClosetMaid Closet Organizer
This lovely ClosetMaid closet organizer looks quite a bit nicer than the Amazon-branded one, but it has a few downsides – including the fact that it IS quite a bit more expensive.
The weight limit for the shelving is 60 pounds. Personally, I think this is perfectly suitable for most people, but if you’re planning on storing a lot of heavy stuff on your baby’s closet organizer (maybe books?), you’re better off going with the Amazon-branded one.
You’ll have more options with the ClosetMaid. Personally, if it were me (and I had an actual closet to put it in), I would go with the ClosetMaid because it LOOKS nicer and it has more customization options.
ClosetMaid Starter Tower
This ClosetMaid is by far my favorite, but it’s also going to cost the most. Instead of the wire, these shelves are made from laminated wood so they look quite a bit nicer.
This set has four different color options, including Cherry, Espresso, Pure White, and Natural Gray. Two shelves are adjustable, whereas the other four are stationary.
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This set is fairly small, but you can buy addons as your baby gets older. For now, I personally think those six shelves and three rods are more than enough to suit your baby’s needs.
BABY CLOSET IDEAS – ADDITIONAL QUICK TIPS & TRICKS
- Put away all clothing except the size your baby is in. When your baby has outgrown the current clothing size, switch out ALL of their clothing for the new size at once.
- Buy as many one-piece outfits as possible! It’s SO much easier to dress a new baby when you don’t have to hunt for the top and bottom. We love these jumpers.
- If you have a baby closet organizer system (my favorite was listed above), leave a couple of the bottom shelves off and tuck a laundry basket there instead. How’s that for a baby closet idea??
- Get some clothespins and attach them to the wall. You can use these to hang things like baby bows, skirts, or hair ties.
- Keep clothing that’s the next size up on the top shelf of the closet (use collapsible bins for this if you want to keep it looking neat). We also kept blankets and our daughter’s winter coat at the top of her closet.
- Seriously give some thought to using hangers. Personally they didn’t work for us. The first time I put all of my baby’s clothing away it all went on hangers and was perfectly organized. I didn’t have time to deal with hangers and organization in the first month of my baby’s life, so eventually I gave up. If you don’t have a lot of room though, utilize this space!
- Out of room? Take a few shelves out of an old bookshelf and convert it into another closet. You can get a closet rod for pretty cheap and attach it to hang clothing on.
- Add shelves to the walls outside of the closet and attach a closet rod. You can even find shelves that already have a closet rod attached.
BABY CLOTHES STORAGE IDEAS
I don’t know about you, but I had a really hard time letting go of my baby’s old clothing. I kept EVERYTHING from my first baby.
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With every size upgrade, I remember sitting in a pile of my own tears on the middle of the floor as I put away the outgrown clothing, and brought out the bigger sized clothing. If this is you – I get it.
While I think we need to make sure we aren’t keeping around TOO much stuff that we won’t use anymore, plenty of old baby clothing can have some sentimental value. So there’s nothing wrong with keeping around at least some of it – and maybe ALL of it if you aren’t done making babies yet.
While this isn’t specifically a baby closet idea – I will say that I DON’T recommend keeping your baby’s old clothing in their closet. So I suppose in a way it is a baby closet idea. But not at the same time.
Either way, here’s a few of my tips for storing these old baby clothes so that your partner doesn’t make you just get rid of them.
- LABEL LABEL LABEL. This is SERIOUSLY the most important step. What I found worked the best was labeling the old clothing bags with both size and importance. That way if I finished packing away clothing and found that I had twenty grocery bags full of 3-6m clothing, I could choose a bag to give away without having to go through every single bag.
- Choose a place for the clothing. I didn’t do this at first, so we had old baby clothing in four or five different places around the house. It made it a pain to find when our second came along, so keep everything in the same place.
- Are you having more kids? If the answer is no, seriously consider whether you need 15 bags of old stained onesies (correct answer – you don’t). Keep one or two bags, sure. But don’t overdo it. I am a BIG fan of decluttering your life in general, and having mass amounts of baby clothing is not how we do that. Keep a few things from each age range that are special, but donate or sell the rest.
WRAPPING UP BABY CLOSET IDEAS
We hope that these baby closet ideas will help you organize and prepare for your new baby. At the same time, make sure you’re cutting yourself some slack. It’s HARD to keep everything organized, and truthfully – the most important thing you can do is make sure you’re getting all of the quality time you can with your new baby.
What was your favorite baby closet idea? Do you have a clever closet hack that I missed? Tell me about it in the comments below?
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