How to Fold Baby Clothes

Top Space or Time-Saving Tips on Keeping Your Baby Clothes Organized

If you’ve recently had a baby, firstly, congratulations! Secondly…prepare for the storm. What storm, you ask?

Well, it’s forged by your friends and family, it’s composed primarily of adorable little baby clothes, and it threatens to turn your home upside down.

Your loved ones mean well, but when there are onesies dangling from the light fixture, socks all over your coffee table, and little dungarees draped over the curtain poles, it can be easy to get a little, shall we say, overwhelmed.

As business owners with a bun fresh out of the oven, to say you’ve got a lot on your plate is the understatement of the century, and unless you learn to manage the incoming clothes with some slick folding techniques, you’ll be buried in baby sleepers before you can say goo-goo-gaga.

Folding Baby Clothes – The KonMari Method

Sure, you can go ahead and fold your little one’s clothes the old-fashioned way if you really want to, but it’s not the most efficient way to tackle your situation, especially if you plan on having more children in the future.

Don’t worry, though, because the folding technique I’m about to tell you about is going to make your lives a lot easier!

Dreamt up by genius minimalist, Marie Kondo, the KonMari folding method takes a charmingly bureaucratic approach to storing your child’s many outfits.

The general idea is that you treat your drawers more like a filing cabinet, so a part of each piece of clothing is always visible when you look inside.

The benefits are…two-fold (see what I did there). Firstly, you can always find the garments you’re looking for, and secondly, you can pick them out of the drawer without creating a tsunami of creased chaos.

To illustrate how it works, I’ll talk you through folding some of the more difficult garments coming your way. Let’s start with an absolute classic…the long-sleeved onesie.

Folding Long-Sleeved Baby Onesies – The KonMari Method

The long-sleeved onesie is probably the most challenging garment to fold no matter what method you subscribe to, but once you get this technique down, you could do it in your sleep (when you finally get a chance to catch a wink or two).

• Your first port of call is to lay the onesie face down evenly on a flat surface.
• Fold it in half vertically, sleeve to sleeve.
• Now bring both sleeves back over the body of the onesie.
• Then fold the whole package horizontally so the buttons and the collar are on top of one another.
• Finish things off with one more horizontal fold.
• Now simply file the onesie away in a drawer. The folded “crease” should be upright, while the edge where the folds meet should be face down.

Now let’s check out how you can achieve the same fold with your baby’s tiny pants.

Folding Long and Short Baby Pants – The KonMari Method

The good news is that the KonMari folding method always follows a pretty similar pattern, so you don’t have to do tons of memorization.

• Lay the pants out on your bed, couch, ironing board…any flat surface.
• Now fold them vertically, leg to leg, as you did with the arms of the onesie.
• Fold the legs horizontally, so they meet up with the waistband.
• Fold them horizontally again, and voilà!
• If you’re dealing with long pants, the trick is to keep folding them horizontally until they’re the right size package to slide into and stand up properly in the filing system. You can also adjust the horizontal folds to suit your draw depth and width.

Next on the agenda is the baby sleeper, something you’re going to receive a ton of!

Folding Baby Sleeper Onesies – The KonMari Method

Don’t worry about the extra leg lengths on a sleeper, you can still just follow the exact same technique as you did with the legless onesie.

• Lay the sleeper face down on a nice, even, flat surface.
• Fold one arm over the other.
• Bring the arms in over the body.
• Then just fold horizontally, legs to collar once…
• Twice.
• And pop it in your filing cabinet, ready for use when your little star drifts off into dreamland.

Folding Baby Clothes – Dresses and Coats

Okay, so you’ll have noticed I didn’t cover how to fold dresses or jackets even though they’re arguably the garments that give us the most grief, but hear me out.

Your wardrobe is already designed to behave like a filing cabinet, and as dresses and coats (and even cozy cardigans) take up so much space when folded, it’s best just to hang them up using these adorable, tiny velvet clothes hangers.

Of course, if you don’t have a spare wardrobe to load up on baby threads, you can go ahead and fold away.

I actually find folding to be slightly faster than hanging but be warned…your drawers may end up looking pretty messy!

The Bin Method

This fix is so simple that it often flies under the radar for new parents, but have you ever thought that the easiest method of folding baby clothes is to not fold them at all?

Granted, this is only really a viable option if you have tons of space, perhaps a walk-in wardrobe or something like that, but if you’ve got it, it can save you a whole bunch of time.

The bin method involves literally chucking a bunch of the same garments into a storage space without folding them.

Open front storage compartments work great for this method, but you could literally use little laundry baskets if you don’t have any shelves.

This is the perfect solution to nondescript, full-body, or low visibility garments such as underwear, rompers, sleepers, onesies, even hair accessories.

It’s more of a lucky dip form of storage, so it’s not suitable for items of clothing that you’ll be picking out specifically as outfits such as dresses and tops, but it’s perfect for the rest.

Final Thoughts

A baby is wonderful, a joy, an absolute delight, but times can get pretty stressful, especially if you’re juggling your newborn with your 1st child (your business), but follow these folding and storage techniques, and you’ll glide through life like the (literal) boss that you are!

Let me know in the comments if you found this useful!