Organizing Tips for My 6Yo's Room, What to Donate, What to Toss, What to Save

I saved my all of my favorite little dresses from my daughter, now 8, and they are hanging in my 8 month old's closet now. As for the rest of the clothes, nope. My firstborn was a spitter, so most newborn clothes got tossed. And clothes are really not that expensive, and they are handed down a lot. For newborn toys, if they aren't beat up or missing pieces and my first child liked them, then I saved them. After my first 2, it was pretty hard to meet that criteria, and most were tossed. I am sometimes sorry, because a lot of the great toys from back then are just not available now. The car seat will probably be expired by the time you have your second child, so dump that. If the portacrib worked, then save it. If you hated it, dump it and start over.

I am horrible at organization, but I had an organizer work with me. She set up "memory bins" for every family member. If the school work/art work meant something, save it in the bin. Save a few of her best pieces also. But I don't think you can save everything. My mom dumped off tons and tons of boxes when I got married. I was not happy about it. I still haven't been through them.

Really, I'd toss most of it, but that's my style.

If the clothes are 3T and up, even if you have another baby in 2 years, you're looking at 5 years from now before anyone wears them! Donate them to Goodwill and they will get lots of use between now and then by children who NEED them instead of just sitting in a bin in your garage.

Same for toys. If she doesn't play with them anymore, donate them. Unless you have one super expensive item that you hoped to hand down through generations, it would be better to KNOW some child is playing with it than hang on to it because you MIGHT have a child to play with it 3 years from now.

Remember that carseats expire after 5 years (plastic gets brittle over time and can't withstand the same kind of crashes).

For school work and artwork, get a binder with sheet protectors and choose a few representative pieces from the year. Stick to FIRSTS and BESTS (ie, I'm saving my son's report on Tigers because it's the first report he wrote, and a cute little written page about why he likes spring because he illustrated it really nicely and doesn't normally do that along with report cards and a book his class made for him when he was Star of the Week... other than that it all got it's turn on the fridge and has since gone out to recycling).

Hope this helps.
T.

For clothes: save things which would work for a boy or a girl, or things that are *truly* special. Trash what's stained/very worn and donate the rest.

Toys: keep the classic, more open-ended toys (tinkertoys, lincoln logs, dolls in good shape, good puzzles with all the pieces, blocks, pretend kitchen 'food' in good shape, good-quality animals, instruments, etc.--in short, things that would really cost you to replace and will be useable by boys or girls) Trash the Happy Meal prizes and plastic junk toys or toys in poor repair. Donate the toys that really never got used but which are in good shape. If you have good doll furniture that you are ready to let go of or a play kitchen, consider donating to a nonprofit daycare as well as the toys. They often need them.
(I have a hard time letting go of toys because of my work, so I understand!)

Thea gave you excellent suggestions about storing school/artwork.

I saw a tip about children's artwork. It said to take photos of it and make a photo book out of them. You could do them by years or subjects. I haven't done this yet but it sounds like a great idea.