We tackled the kids’ clothes today. Well, two out of three kids, at least–but we did start with the hardest first: our eight-year-old fashionista.

In theory, thinning out the kids’ wardrobe should be easy. After all: as long as they are still growing, all it takes is getting rid of the outfits they have outgrown, right?

Well, that’s almost all it takes. It also requires a commitment to break the cycle and keep replacement purchases to a minimum. We will see how well we do on that second part, but for now, it was quite the purge.

In addition to the outgrown clothing, we also had whole heaps of school uniforms to get rid of. The kids will be moving to a school without uniforms, and even though some of those shirts and skirts and pants still fit, I can pretty much guarantee that the kids will never want to wear those outfits again! We did hold onto a couple of items for each of them, though, now “demoted” to the rank of  nice clothes.

For the most part, we have been just sending off clothes to various donation sites and charities, but for some of these outfits–especially the school uniforms and some of our daughter’s dresses–we decided it would be worth the extra step of dropping them off at a children’s clothing consignment shop around the corner from us.

We ended up with two big trash bags of clothing to bring to consignment, plus another three big bags of donation goods. And as a bonus: we also packed up all of the winter clothing, which will come up with me on my next trip to North Carolina.