157: The Two-Bin Trick That’ll Save Your Kids’ Closets

If your kids' clothes seem to multiply overnight and you're tired of the daily battle with outgrown t-shirts and “never-gonna-wear-it” dresses, THIS episode is for you. 

Diana keeps it super real (and super simple!) with a quick, low-stress method to finally get a handle on all those clothes buried in the back of your children’s closets.

Here’s what you’ll take away in just a few minutes:

• The super-easy, “how-did-I-not-try-this-before” bin hack that stops clothing clutter before it starts.
• Exactly what to do with clothes your kids outgrow halfway through the week (including those random pieces they always ignore).
• Smart tips for storing future hand-me-downs or those seasonal items you’re saving for next year.
• Why you only need a few minutes—seriously, you’re just piggybacking on laundry or school-night routines!

Whether you have a walk-in closet or just a sliver of space, Diana’s approach will clear your mind and your floors. 

**Tune in now and get ready for that “ahhhh” feeling the next time you open the closet door!

Simplify The School Year PRE-SALE! Ends TONIGHT - grab it here for just one payment of $27

For donation tips, listen to this episode here.

What can you expect from this podcast and future episodes?

• 15-20 minute episodes to help you tackle your to-do list
• How to declutter in an effective and efficient way
• Guest interviews
• Deep dives on specific topics

Find Diana Rene on social media:
Instagram: @the.decluttered.mom
Facebook: @the.decluttered.mom
Pinterest: @DianaRene

Are you ready for a peaceful and clutter-free home? Watch my FREE training video “Chaos to Calm” to learn how it’s possible! And find all of my resources here.

Transcript

Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home. Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast. My name is Diana Rene and I am your host. You can find me on Instagram at thedeclutteredmom, but I am really happy that you are here, because this podcast is one of my favorite places to just go a little deeper on some topics, but also just to be able to offer some very useful and quick tips, tricks, encouragement, all of the above. Social media is great, instagram is great, tiktok is great, but sometimes it can feel really hard to actually teach you how to do anything, because everyone's attention span mine included is very short over there. Sometimes I amaze myself where I'm like okay, I got to get off here because my squirrel brain is out of control at this point. So today I wanted to go over something that is just. It's very quick, it's very simple, but it will make a big impact in your closets, specifically your children's closets. It does help with yours also, but because kids are just growing so fast and they grow out of clothes, it feels like a week after you buy them. It definitely helps, or it feels like it helps a lot more in kids' closet situations. So what I want to talk about is basically how to manage clothes that they either outgrow number one or they just don't ever wear. They hate it. Or maybe you have an infant and you find yourself always reaching for specific onesies and you always reach over that one onesie that you know I'm talking about, that you just don't like because the buttons are hard to snap and it's frustrating and and so you just don't go for it. Like those types of clothes. Or if you have older kids, clothes that they just never wear, and you'll hold it up and you'll be like why don't you wear this? And they're like I don't know, I don't want to. I want to wear that, those types of clothes where you can tell they just don't like it, even if they're not telling you I don't like that. And so primarily outgrown clothes, though this is going to be really helpful for and I said, there are so many of my systems, you guys, that I'm like this is so simple that it hurts, like it's such a simple thing that can improve our lives so much out of overwhelm. So all it is is you want to have one bin in your closet for hand-me-downs or something that needs to go in storage if you have other kids, and the other one is a bin in your closet for donations.

Diana Rene: 3:37

And I hesitated there because my brain was like hold on on that first bin. So the bin, the first bin, for hand-me-downs. I call it the hand-me-down bin, but it can also be clothes that you just need to put away for storage. So if it's like you have a really bulky fleece zip up in your kid's closet and it's May, so like it's not quite cold enough to like put away all of the sweatshirts, but definitely not warm enough to put away all the sweatshirts, but definitely warm enough to put away the very winter things, you can toss that in there too, but primarily clothes that they have grown out of or need to go in storage is kind of the criteria for the first bin. The second bin is for donations.

Diana Rene: 4:24

Now if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, diana, I do not have space in my closet or in my kids' closets for two bins, then just do one, and then you just have to go through the extra step when you're going through those bins to sort them into two piles. Not a big deal at all, but if you do have the space, it is nice to just sort from the beginning, because you're basically cutting out an extra step, and anytime we can cut out any extra steps in our busy lives, that's wonderful, right? So what I do is when my kids were really little, I had a lot of things stored in their closets at shelves one shelf in the top of their closet and when they were little, I used those for big time storage, because the house that we lived in at the time had like zero storage and so I was keeping all sorts of things up there. It really wasn't theirs per se, because it was just random storage items, and so when they were little, I had two bins on the floor, and what I used at that time were the fabric cubes. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like you know how, there's like cube shelves, like the square shelves, and then you can put like a fabric bin inside. That's the same shape. I used two of those in each of their closets. Okay, I just kept them on the floor in the back corner of it, so it wasn't like in their face and I just would toss things in there when I was going through getting them dressed and all of that.

Diana Rene: 5:59

Now I have two bins at the top of their closet on the shelf that goes above, and they're a little larger because my kids are older. My kids are now 8 and 11. And so their clothes just take up more space. Right, like, a sweatshirt for an 11-year-old girl is much larger than a sweatshirt for a two-year-old, so they're a little bit bigger. And then they're.

Diana Rene: 6:27

This is the one hard part about a podcast, you guys, is it's not visual. So I have to explain it to you and I'm not very good at explaining visual things. So they are still fabric bins. I believe I got them on Amazon. I'm sure we could probably put the link in the show notes, but they are taller on the sides and then shorter in the front. They're not all the way down, but they're shorter in the front. That way it's easy for my girls to just toss the clothes up there, or it's easy for me. I'm very tall, so it's easy for me to just put them in there. My girls are not that tall, but they will just bundle them up and toss them in there, and so that's what we have right now.

Diana Rene: 7:08

So when you're going through, like how does this work functionally right, when anytime you are helping get them dressed or you're putting away laundry or anything like that, if you put your hands or your eyes on a clothing item that you're like I think that might be too small now, or she just never wears this and I'm tired of, like picking it up back off the floor from the hanger and hanging it back up or having to move it to go to the clothes that she does wear. Anytime those thoughts come up when you are dealing with their clothes. That is when you want to just grab the item, toss it in the bin. Remember, for donations, you can go back to a recent episode I had about how much clothing waste we have. I talked a little bit in there about how donation centers do not want your torn, stained. They don't want your clothes that you would not put on your own child or that you would not give to a friend. So if it is not an item that you would give to another friend to put on their child, then it is not good enough for donation and you got to either toss those or you can go back and listen to that episode where it will give you lots of ideas of what you can do with those types of clothing items. But if it's something that's good enough for donation, toss it in there. If it's something that you either want to keep, to save for a hand-me-down for younger siblings or maybe a neighbor or a cousin or anything like that, then that goes in the hand-me-down bin. So that's how it works functionally.

Diana Rene: 8:47

Then what you want to do is, one time a season, go through these. Now, if the bin is like overflowing which sometimes that can happen if you have not gone through and like fully decluttered their wardrobes, that might happen for a bit until you get to that point. But for a benchmark or just general rule, I recommend doing this one time a season, so basically four times a year rule I recommend doing this one time a season, so basically four times a year. So for me, as the seasons are changing in Colorado, like in the spring, as it's starting to get warmer, I'll go through them, and once it hits summer and we are never dipping down below 80 degree days, that's when I'll go through it again. I usually go through it. Now that I say this, I just said four and I'm thinking in my head, I actually go through this about five, because I do go through it right before school starts, and then I go through it again when, like, fall really hits, and then after winter, right, so you, you can find what works for you.

Diana Rene: 9:50

If you live in a climate where it's like, always hot, like if you live in Miami and you're like, what do you mean winter clothes, right, then you will have to just make up specific dates that you're going to go through it Anytime. I'm trying to do something four times, four-ish times a year. I always just pick quarters, so like January 1st, april 1st, so like the first of each quarter is when I would do something like this. But whatever works for you, but at least I would say at least four times a year you go through these bins, you sort them, you do the thing right. So, like, if you have donate, then you take those items and you drop them off for donation. Or if you have hand-me-downs that you're giving to the neighbor, you wash the clothes and give them to your neighbor. At that four or five times a year mark, right? If you have clothes that you need to put in storage for future kids, then you do it at that time. So, basically, the idea is to empty those bins and have a fresh start at least four times a year and again, probably quite a bit more if your kids have a lot of clothes or if they are in school, it's going to kind of naturally be five times a year, because going back to school is always kind of a reset when it comes to clothing and making sure that they have the clothes that they need. And so, yeah, I hope this is helpful.

Diana Rene: 11:18

Again, it's something that is so simple. It's literally putting two bins in a closet and remembering to toss things in them when you need to, and then going through them four times a year need to, and then going through them four times a year. It's going to take you basically zero time to put the bins in the closet and to toss clothes into them when you need to, because you're doing it when you're already doing things like laundry or putting clothes away or getting your kids dressed or anything like that. So really, the only time you're adding on is going through the bins and doing what you need to do with the clothing. But guess what? You're doing that anyway. You're just not doing it in a systemized way. That actually is reducing the time you're actually spending on this. So if kids' clothes and the transition of going through clothes is just driving you crazy, this will definitely help. It's not going to transform your kid's closet, it's not going to like transform your kid's closet and it's not going to change your entire life, but it is going to be something that you're like hey, that was helpful and that actually like was nice that I had someplace to toss that shirt and now I know that it's going to get handled when it needs to get handled.

Diana Rene: 12:26

So I love it when you send me DMs on Instagram.

Diana Rene: 12:30

Instagram, because sometimes on the podcast I feel like I'm speaking into a void, and on Instagram it's totally different, because I get almost immediate response and feedback whenever I post anything, and the goal of this podcast is to help you. So if this was helpful, please let me know. If there are things that you would like me to cover on the podcast, please let me know. I would love to hear it. I'm always looking for ideas for you because, again, that's the entire point of this podcast is to just be able to help you. So we will see you in next week's episode. Thanks for hanging out and listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.