Recycling kids' clothes

[katkat]

When our kids were little , maybe up to about 8 or 10, at the end of each school year, I would try on each pair of pants & shirts, etc & eyeball them to see whether they would be too short in the Fall. These were long pants & long sleeved shirts. If I thought they would be too short---which they hated-- in the evenings, I would cut short the sleeves & hand hem them. If pants, I would make play shorts from them. Although they had some nicer, summery clothes for Church, visiting, etc., these "new" play clothes, usually in darker shades from winter, saved us a lot of money.
I once took a favorite long sleeved shirt in pink stripes with a yoke neck & knowing my DD would not fit into it next Fall, I cut out the yoke, made it sleeveless & it was a cute tank top all summer. At the time, I had no sewing machine, so I hand sewed all of this stuff, usually a piece each night, while watching TV. It helped. Later we joked that our kids had OP corduroy play shorts long before they came into style.------katkat

[McD]

Something I do to stretch Wesley's summer wardrobe into fall is to layer. It's popular right now and I get get 5 or 6 white long sleeve tshirts and put his short sleeve shirts over them. It makes him look cool and it makes me have to buy less long sleeve shirts!

[missyali]

For the longest time my grandpa wore a thermal shirt under a short sleeve shirt & we teased him. Little did we know he was so far ahead of the fashion curve A few friends from work & I mark our kids' clothes on the tag and then pass them around. It's great to see your favorites on another little person and it's a nice way to declutter and save money at the same time.

[joyofsix]

Generally, if it's in decent condition I keep it for the next kid. I have quite a system. If it's torn I repair it. I use cool patches and such for holes. If things still fit in the waist but are too short I add decorative material at the bottom and some more up top so it looks like a plan. We layer too. Once they are really bad they become play clothes. After that they have become pillows (velour pj's), bags, crayon holders or just rags.