Reducing the children's wardrobes

I've been working on a plan to streamline the never ending confusion of children's clothing that seems to occupy vast amounts of our home, and take up way too much of my time.  Would you like to hear it?  It's fairly extreme, I'm warning you...

Alright then, here it is.

I am cutting down each child's wardrobe to *gulp* ELEVEN outfits.  Seven daily sets of clothes, and four 'nice' or church sets.  Ideally, this number will be dropped even further in the future, to nine outfits, seven daily and two church.  Each 'outift' will consist of a bottom, a top, a sweater in cooler weather, underclothing, socks, etc.  The whole outfit.  So yes, seven pants, seven long sleeve shirts, seven sweaters, seven pairs of socks, etc.  At the beginning, I'm going to allow each child unlimited pajamas and for Samuel, unlimited underpants while he's still newly potty trained.  Again, eventually my goal is to have underclothing limited to seven sets, and pajamas to perhaps two or three sets.

Why so drastic?  Why bother to do this at all?

Two reasons.

1)  Like every at-home mother worth her salt, I spend a lot of time maintaining my home.  Washing dishes, making beds, cooking food, doing laundry, etc. etc.  A lot of time.  I think if I was honest with myself I could easily spend the same amount of time working at home that my husband spends working outside of the home.  And don't for a moment think I'm complaining!  I love my job, it's just that I see it as a career choice - and like any career, I think efficiency is key.

The way my children's clothing is set up right now is inefficient.  They have too many clothes to manage in any reasonable fashion.  Clothing gets misplaced within the 'laundry cycle' "where are the purple pants that go with the purple shirt??" and I don't have an area designated for clothing that requires stain removal (oftentimes I can't even remember that a shirt had tomato sauce spilled on it, because dirty clothing goes in the laundry hamper, and laundry for the children is done when the hamper is full, which could be days and days away because they have so. much. clothing.).  The result is that I spend an inordinate amount of time managing the wardrobes of two small people.  I like my children to look nice, which means that every few weeks I'm combing their closets removing what I can remember is too small, or trying to bring in clothing that was too big and now may fit, or taking clothing with stains down to the laundry room to attempt to remove them, or else making piles of 'clothing to become rags', 'clothing to become cloth wipes', 'clothing to be donated', 'clothing that I loved on the kids and can't bear to part with so will be stored in totes in the basement'.  I'm a little embarassed.

2)  On a more global scale, I think we are called to live simply.  Certainly as a Christian family we are not to put our hope in worldly goods, nor to concern ourselves with what we wear.  Our needs will be provided by God, and for us this is certainly true!

We've never worried about where our children's clothing would come from.  I've always found exactly what I needed at clothing sales, or thrift stores, or else a bag of beautiful second hand clothes has arrived on my doorstep from a friend with kids just a bit bigger than my own.  We've always managed.  And so why the overabundance of clothing when others could benefit from what we have?  Other children could use these clothes, which we have more than enough of.  As WE have been blessed, so we can bless others.

And perhaps equally as important, I want the message I send to my children and the world to be one and the same:  Be clean, be neat, but don't be vain.  The clothes you have are functional and sufficient.  They don't have tears or rips or stains, they aren't old fashioned or impractical for life, they are (fortunately for us, others in the world are not so lucky) attractive and cute and adorable as well as being just. fine.  Just fine.  I don't need my daughter to keep every pretty dress I come across.  I don't need my son to have 15 pairs of cords because I like cords.  That is overkill, and it's just plain wrong in the face of other people's needs.