How I Let My Preschooler Pick Out Her Own Clothes

I was inspired by this post at Fresh Coat of Paint (now House for Five) to create the project that sparked the idea for this post.  For a while now, I have been letting Bailey pick out her clothes for school the night before.  Yes, I let me 3 year old pick out her own clothes...call me crazy!  I just ask her a starting question and then give her options from there.  It goes a little like this...

 Starting Question: "Do you want to wear a dress or pants/shorts (depending on the weather)?"

This is the starting off point for every outfit.  If she says dress, I give her 2-3 dress options and move on to shoes.  If she says pants/shorts, I give her 2-3 options for pants/shorts and move to shirts.  The basis is really just providing options.

Example, she picks a pants.  From 2-3 options of pants (black leggings, jeans, etc), she chooses what she wants.

Then I give her 2-3 options for shirts that I know will all match with her choice of bottoms (i.e. I'm not going to give her a pink shirt if she picked pink leggings).

From there we move to shoes.  This is a little tricky because she is unfortunately really picky about her shoes.  Not what they look like, but how they feel.  She will have them off by the end of the day if they aren't the ones she wanted and comfortable.  If it's school, she has to wear close toed shoes so that really limits her options.  If it's a day out, she has more free reign.

If she picks shoes where she has to wear socks, then she picks out the color from the set she has for that shoe type (i.e. ankle socks for tennis shoes, tall socks for boots, thin socks for basic flats/Toms style shoes).

That's a lot of details, but I promise this whole process usually only takes about 10 minutes on average (with a few distractions).  However, doing this the night before and letting her "choose" limits the battles and frustration with waiting til the morning to "throw something on".  Now it's my turn to start learning to be better about doing this for myself!

Next I'll be sharing where we hang her outfits and a FREE printable!!!

I hope this was helpful, and as always, thanks for stopping by!





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