Which baby stuff is worth keeping?

By Published On: August 10th, 2011

Written by: Mindy August 09 2011 It appears I’ve been […]

Written by: Mindy

It appears I’ve been feeding Chloe growth hormone. She’s barely over 3 months old, and she’s already wearing 6-month clothing.

This is in stark contrast to my first baby, Caden. At 6 months, he was still wearing 3-month clothing.

Because of her early bulk, we already have a pile of clothes and booties and hats that Chloe has outgrown. Some of them I’m happy to get rid of—especially the ones with poop stains that couldn’t be eradicated no matter what kind of wild chemical I tried.

But for other things, I already have some major sentimental attachment. There’s one little pink and red polka-dot outfit with a picture of cherries on the front. It says, “I love you cherry much!” It melts my heart when I look at it because it brings back all those early days from when we first brought our little girl home. Actually, there are a lot of little outfits that melt my heart.

My current problem is deciding what to keep. I know I can’t keep everything; that would be silly. And it’s not worth it to keep a lot of stuff in the event we have another baby (which we’re currently planning not to do). We know from experience that each new baby gets a flood of new clothing from well-wishers, and then rarely makes it through all the clothes before growing out of them.

My mom kept a lot of stuff from when her three kids were little. When Caden was first born, she went through her boxes and brought me little tie-up nightshirts and jackets for him. They were sweet … though definitely not something I would have picked out on my own. I think I only put him in them once.

She also kept shoes, overalls, little dresses … a ton of stuff, really. It’s neat to get to look at little clothes I used to wear, and I know my mom loves memory-tripping through the boxes, but I’m not sure that’s something I want to do. It means storing a lot of stuff for thirty years or so.

The thing is, I already have a clutter problem. I have piles of stuff in corners and closets. I would like very much to overcome these bad habits. Keeping a bunch of baby stuff for sentimental reasons isn’t likely to help me with my problem.

So how do I decide? What types of things do you think are most important to keep, for memory’s sake?