Preparing for Fall: Children's Wardrobes

I have been thinking about the kids' fall wardrobes since we are in September now. One of the things I am trying to do (as I have mentioned in previous posts) is to become more minimalistic with their clothing. In the past, I have gone shopping only on clearance racks or sale racks and have picked up whatever looked cute for both of my older kids. But now that my children are able to dress themselves (the older two), they also love picking out what they are wearing each day instead of me giving them their outfit. What I have seen lately is that my son has two favorite colors (Navy and Red), and he'll choose only clothes in those colors to wear. He also loves jeans. My daughter loves pink and leans towards anything that's either a dress or pink to wear. At first this drove me crazy because I was wondering why on earth she won't wear anything else that I have for her (so many cute clothes!) but then I started realizing that if she didn't have those other clothes, I wouldn't care. I only want her to wear them ALL because I spent money on them ALL. Other than that, I don't really care what she wears...even though I do cringe if she doesn't match, hahaha.

So, I am trying to take what I have learned from my first years of dressing children and use it to become a smarter shopper for their new fall clothes. My baby is going to be wearing mostly hand-me-downs from her sister, the ones that overlap with the correct season, anyway. I may pick her up a few new onesies though because ours have gotten pretty worn out by now.

Anyway, I have done a little research on other blogs as well as on Google and have tried to figure out what my kids' fall wardrobes should look like. Here's a helpful article I have read on being minimalistic in clothes.

With all of that in mind, I came up with a reasonably-sounding list for each kid, which basically includes enough outfits to have one for each day of the week (instead of more than that like we've had in the past), several warm sweaters per kid for our frigid winters here, several church outfits, a pair of play shoes each, one pair of church shoes each, socks and underwear and the winter necessities such as jackets, hats and scarves and mittens. And for the girls, several pairs of tights.

I'm hoping I can stay minimalistic with the clothes from now on and make my laundry loads lighter, too!