Today I took a stab at organizing Mattie’s clothes.

It would not be exaggerating to say that Mattie has more clothes than I do. It would not even be exaggerating to suggest that she has more clothes than me a couple of times over, especially now, when I still only fit into a tenth of my wardrobe.

I completely understand how this happened. When someone’s having a baby, it’s hard to know just what to get them. And if you can’t afford the big-ticket items from the baby registery, then an easy, smart solution is to go for clothes. “Every baby needs clothes,” you think to yourself. “And they go through them so quickly! I bet this would be a huge help!”

And, when you think that, you’re not wrong. The problem comes when EVERYONE thinks that. We have gotten so many clothes for Mattie that I honestly don’t think she’ll be able to wear them all. This is where my inherited sense of efficiency comes to bite me in the ass. If Mattie doesn’t soil an outfit during the day, I leave it on her (why not? She doesn’t sweat, or get grass stains, or even throw up much yet). And, whenever I do laundry I insist on doing a full load. We do more laundry now than ever, because when Mattie does poop through an outfit, you want to get that clean quick, so the result is a small supply of frequently-worn clothes that’s sort of been whittled down by convenience. For example: zippered sleepers are better than the button ones, which take forever to fasten. I’m much more likely to put her in outfits that have been given to us by someone we see regularly, like Tyler’s mom, than outfits from, say, Tyler’s friends that live in Chicago (yes, this is also an etiquette custom inherited from my mother: try to let people see the baby in the clothes they’ve given her, when possible).

Anyway, the baby has just started to outgrow some of her newborn (0-3 month) stuff, which prompted me to sit down today to go through the enormous pile of clothes that I ignored when she was too teeny, and weed out some of the newborn stuff that she no longer fits into. Basically completely reorganize her dresser. To my dismay, I discovered two things: first, that thanks to my efficiency there are some newborn clothes she’s never even put on, and second, that I have no idea what’s going to fit her now.

Sidebar: dear major baby clothing companies: please standardize your systems so we mommies don’t go nuts. Carters, for example, has sizes NB, 3 months, 6 months, and so on. Oshkosh has 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, etc. Occasionally you even see a 0-6, 6-12 month company. Which one is it? If Mattie is, say, 6 months old, I could feasibly put her in an outfit that’s labeled 6 months, 6-12 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months, or 0-3 months. Sigh. These are all wildly different sizes; how am I supposed to know what will work? Can’t these companies just all use the same system? And a better system, at that?

Argh. Anyway, I feel really guilty that Mattie’s never worn some of these beautiful outfits, or only worn them once (how many times does the baby have to wear a dress outfit so you’ve gotten your money’s worth? Three times? Four times?). It feels like wasting to me, though putting her in a new outfit every day just to get through the rotations seems pretty darn wasteful, too. Seriously, I am like wrought with guilt over this. And today when I was organizing the next size up of clothes, I couldn’t help but notice that, given my laundry-washing habits and continued sense of don’t-waste-fullness, I have way, way more clothes than she’ll be able to wear while she’s in the roughly 3-6 month size. (I have learned that this is the most popular size to give when it comes to baby clothes, because some newborns never even wear 0-3). This means that the NEXT time I sit down to organize a new crop of clothing, I’m going to go through the same thing. I’m trapped in a vicious cycle of guilt and waste, people!

Okay, so please don’t take offense, those of you who got us clothes for gifts, but I decided to do something really bad: I’m putting away a bunch of these new clothes, tags on, to regift. I know that’s a tacky thing to do, but since nobody gave me gift receipts, it’s the only way to try to get these clothes used. I have a plastic Children’s Place bag of shame that I’ve been filling up with these pretty 3-6 month clothes, and the next time someone I know has a baby, I’ll wrap some up as a gift. And the time after that. And the time after that, and so on.

Ah, but now I’m weaving a web of lies: I have to be really, really careful to never give anyone the same clothes they gave us, or even the same clothes that someone at the same shower or party gave us. And it does occur to me: what if some of the clothes we got were regifted in this same way, like the proverbial fruitcake that gets passed, uneaten, from family to family every Christmas?

Why is this so complicated? I know I should be grateful for the very nice clothes that everyone got us, and I am. But I can’t help wishing that I just had say, seven identical sleepers in different colors that I could just keep washing and throwing on the kid. I’m not a “dress your infant up” kind of girl. Mattie has never left the house wearing a headband, or barrettes, despite having the hair to pull it off. I never put her in dresses (it’s cold out, people!), and I rarely bother with anything that, say, buttons up the back or, God forbid, needs to be ironed. I see babies at my mother-baby group decked out in their finest, and I think “Mattie has outfits like that with the tags still on. Am I a bad mother?”

This pressure to prettify the kid is ridiculous. Dressing a baby is hard enough without worrying about the number of outfits and where they came from. (Whose idea was it to invent baby clothes that button up the back, anyway? I’ll tell you who: people without kids.)