I'm getting in such a muddle over baby clothes. Decide for me!

[BroccoliSpears]

Here's the situation:

I have a 2.4 yr old girl and a 5 mnth old boy.

I have the corresponding girls and boys clothes that they have respectively grown out of from 0 - their present age. All lovingly washed and folded and boxed and labelled and stored in the attic. There are quite a few boxes.

In a few weeks time I am moving to another country for some time between 1 and 10 years.

DO I TAKE THE CLOTHES?

I might schlep all those boxes over there, not have any more children and wish that I'd spared the expence of shipping them and have nowhere to store them in our (probably smaller) house over there. It seems to be tempting fate to take them.

Or I might have another child or two and really wish I had all the clothes. I hate waste and it will really pain me to buy babygrows when I have perfectly good babygrows sitting in my atttic at home. And if I have another child I would want them to wear the clothes I have loved dd or ds in.

I could give the lot to charity. But I lovingly stored them hoping to use them again. Much of it has sentimental value (only in a "awww remember dd looking cute in that dress" way, but still...) I almost certainly will give it all to the charity shop eventually, but I don't want to yet.

Have been faffing about this all weekend.

Today I separated 'much loved' clothes from 'just useful' clothes and now have 3 boxes of loved clothes and a binbag of babygrows and vests in all different sizes.

Gahhhh. I know this is an assinine problem to have, but I can't decide what to do.

I'm making decisions to throw or give away half my possessions every day at the moment and baby clothes is where my brain can't cope any more.

[BoysAreLikeDogs]

Blimey I cannot believe that I missed this news. Where are you off to ?

Anyway

Do you have family/really good friends who can store/send to you as necessary?

Otherwise - keep the most sentimental items, charity shop the rest and buy new as and when.

I only say this because I lovingly laundered, folded and stored Ds1's clobber only find on getting it all back out for DS2 that the majority of the stuff was actually pretty vile, stained, out of shape and generally eurghh.

HTH

[BroccoliSpears]

Off to Dubai. So no real need for all the jumpers and cardigans knitted by various grannies and aunties either...

Actually you have a v good point about the state of some of the things I'm keeping. Cheap shapeless vests with banana stains. Primark babygrows that have already been used on 2 children.

Maybe if I really cut it down I can then take one box of the important stuff just in case?

[foxytocin]

Broc. I plan on taking about a week's supply of clothing for dd1, 3.5yrs. plus a few extras like a cardi. I am taking reusables and similar clothing for dd2. I am working also on the principle that I grew up in the Caribbean and I am sure that my mum raised 6 kids on a lot less clothes than I have for dd.

Things will dry so fast out there. In November the weather will be in the 20's during the day but cooling off in the evening as it does in the desert. You will acclimatise so by Jan, you may find 19 degrees a bit on the cool side.

Because there are a lot of young families out there, I suspect you can get 2nd hand things in excellent condition through the baby and toddler groups.

[eidsvold]

WHen we moved from the UK back to Aus - I was pregnant with 2nd child - no idea boy or girl and I had dd(1) already. We took three boxes and three suitcases - sum total.

So I kept clothes that I really could not bear to give away - so dd1's first christmas outfit and bib, the outfit she came home in. I also then took things I could not bear to give away.

Dc2 turned out to be a dd and at times I wistfully remembered some of the outfits dd1 had BUT hey I got the chance to buy more for her again. I only brought really good ones and did not worry so much about the day to day stuff - figuring I could replace that.

[BroccoliSpears]

You speak wise words.

I am going to keep one or two much loved outfite and charity shop the rest.