I last posted about calculating the minimum number of clothes needed for a newborn baby. Partly inspired by an article on how to calculate your laundry requirements , it was based on the potential number of mishaps per day.

I concluded that you would want ten daytime outfits (to last two messy days) and six night-time outfits (to last two messy nights) in 1-month and 3-month sizes to get you comfortably through the first months.

Today I went through the baby's wardrobe to see how it measured up to this estimate. As I bought the baby's clothes in a haphazard fashion long before coming up with my estimate, I had no idea what the results would be. Turns out, not too bad. To date, I have:

5 newborn night-time outfits
6 newborn daytime outfits

2 three month-old night-time outfits
6 three month-old daytime outfits

The first lesson to be learnt is that sometimes you'll be surprised that you don't own as many things as you think you do!

Second, perhaps my assessment that you needed a complete set of outfits in 1- month and 3-month sizes was a bit over-the-top. When you're running out of clothes because baby is spitting up every hour, I don't suppose you really care whether they fit perfectly or not. Ten newborn baby outfits might therefore be bit of an overkill: if you end up with a clean angel-baby, you'd only have to wash all the outfits nine times before reaching the 3-month mark!

Perhaps the estimate should be: six night-time and ten daytime outfits in sizes ranging from 1 month to 3 months+. As you move towards the three month mark you start to learn your baby's habits and can add larger clothes as needed.

Based on this new estimate my baby's wardrobe doesn't look so bad:

7 night-time outfits, and
12 daytime outfits,

Things I would change next time: a lot of my small outfits are newborn sizes and in retrospect I should have bought the next size up to ensure they last longer. It also looks like I'll have to buy more 3-month old pyjamas at some point- especially as I've heard that sometimes the small sizes don't fit simply because baby's feet grow so quickly!

As a whole, however, I have to say this analysis has made me feel pretty good about my baby's future attire. Now I guess I just have to see how it measures up to the crying, drooling, burping, pooing, peeing reality.