Last week, I shared some of my tips about making the morning rush a little easier to navigate by prepping a bunch of different things in advance. Today, in partnership with The Quaker Oats company, I'm going to dive a little deeper into how to organize/save kids clothes so that they are easily accessible. That way when you are getting the kids (or yourself) dressed it's easy to find everything and get on with grabbing breakfast and heading out for the day.

So your kid's drawers might look something like the above shot. And that's what my drawers looked like before I realized it was taking way too long to find stuff when things weren't folded consistently, things weren't labeled, and it was hard to tell what was what. Here are my four musts for getting it all organized…

1. Fold so that all pieces can be viewed from the top. I used to fold things flat and lay them into the drawers on top of one another. But then whatever is at the bottom never gets seen, and if you try and pull things out from the bottom, you end up having to sift through whatever is on top. By folding so all your items can be seen from the top, you can easily see what's what and when you pull it out, all the other clothes stay in place.

2. Label each drawer with its contents. I like to have the drawers ordered from top to bottom based on what's being worn. For example, tops in one drawer, shorts/pants next, then dresses/rompers. Especially since you (or your partner) might not remember your kid's clothing purely based on the color or pattern, label each drawer for easy access for both putting the clothes away and for pulling them out. This will help save a ton of time when it comes time to pick outfits for the next day.

3. Organize long-term storage as kids outgrow clothes. If you are saving clothes for future children, once your kids outgrow their clothes, save the clothes into bins labeled by age. For example, I have: 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months, 12-18 months, then it goes by half years or full years like 2.5 to 3 years old or 3 to 4 years old. I pretty much keep the sizes consistent with how baby/kids clothing is labeled but also based on when my kids actually wore them. So even though it says 9 months, if my 12 month old still fits into it, I would store it in the 12 month bin since my next kid will most likely have a similar growth pattern.

Now, this might seem overwhelming if you haven't already started organizing as you go. But have no fear, because you can simply work through what you have an start dividing the clothes into bins labeled per size. As soon as something is too small for one of my kids, I put it into the next bin of their past or current size. This also works with clothes you are saving for when they get bigger so you can have a bin for their next size up if you have a bunch of clothing that was given as a gift that they don't yet fit into.

4. Group like with like. And then when you have time to sit with the most recent bin, you can cluster together groups of clothing like "rompers", "pants", "bibs" etc. Grouping them together within each bin may seem like an extra step, but when you're ready to use these clothes again in the future and your new baby needs a sweater cause the temperatures just dropped overnight, it will save you a ton of time digging through a pile of clothes especially if you're on your way to work and need to find things quickly.

This helped me so much as we packed away Ruby's old clothes and now get to use them for Coco. As soon as Coco's current clothes get too small, I cry because my baby is growing too fast (ha!) but then I also just pull out her next bin and can refresh her clothing and pull out from her dresser the smaller baby clothes that no longer fit. It keeps things rotating in and out as these little ones grow.

Do you guys have any other tips or recommendations you use for storing your kids' clothing?

This post is brought to you in collaboration with the Quaker Oats Company. All content, ideas, and words are my own.

{Photos by Casey Brodley, styling by Ariel Fulmer}