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If I have gift receipts, I'll exchange them.
If I don't, I'll use them for play clothes and/or spare clothes over at my mom's (primary caretaker).

I def try to get a pic or two in the outfit and send it to anyone that would enjoy that...but most of my friends/fam don't care and tell me to do what is useful with it when they give the gift anyway!

J wears uniforms to school/daycare so that doesn't work for us. I take a photo in it if I can and I just give it away or sell it.

Same as the others, if I can't easily exchange them, I save them for days we aren't going anywhere or keep them in the diaper bag. I see it as it means I can just buy a few pieces I really love, instead of having to spend money to fill out her wardrobe.

But you are right that you only have a limited amount of time to choose everything's yourself. C is only 22 months and already is very opinionated on her clothes. It's impossible to get her to wear stripes!

Most of the people who gift us things leave a gift receipt and genuinely would prefer I get what we really need though.

Just regarding fewer, quality pieces, you might see that your son is harder on his clothes as he gets older and you will need more items to get through the week.

My son's clothes from his first year are pristine, the recent stuff is rags when he's done with it.

Daycare and backup clothes that stay in the car. I will also put her in them if we are seeing that person.

I put LO in the ugly stuff anyway. We seem to get like, all pink outfits from the inlaws (I am not a fan of pink at all) and my mom gets LO those popular-in-the-south crazy ruffle outfits--like ruffles on the legs of pants. I am not a fan of ANY of it.

Butttttt....it's free and my husband would die (die!) if I wasn't grateful to get free stuff because he is super frugal with money and points out that kids don't care what they are wearing and it's a waste to buy extra stuff when you've already gotten free gifts from someone who loves your LO.

Look, my mom just gave my LO a matching pants + tank top set that has stripes, sparkles, exploding stars, AND CATS. Like an iron-on decal of a cat with sparkle stars exploding behind it, on both the tank and the pants. I couldn't hate it more.

But...LO wore it to the park yesterday.

I found the cat pants and tank!!! It's the second set from the left...just hover over it for the full effect. http://www.kohls.com/product/prd-c582954/jumping-beans-patriotic-mix-match-coordinates-toddler-girl.jsp

I try and return. If they aren't horrible, I will send her to day care in them. But some I just can't do, so they go to Goodwill. Same with hand me downs, if I don't like they go to Goodwill.

My friend gives me a lot of her son's hand me downs so I don't feel guilty donating the items that I really don't like. I know that's a bit different than someone spending the money and gifting them to you.

@Anagram: Oh my! The patriotism! The cat! I bet your LO was still adorable in it, though. I sort of want to get that for my niece just to watch my sis squirm when she opens it, haha!

@Anagram: ha! I just can't even... you're a better person than me.

I also don't like having too many clothes for my kiddos, and I put them in things I like. I try to exchange stuff that I really hate, and like others I put stuff I'm meh about in the diaper bag. If something was really special to the gift giver (my mil made dd some dresses for example) then I make sure to send pictures or put her in them. But if your aunt is buying so many I'm sure they aren't all special.

You could maybe pick one or two that you like to keep and fake pictyres of and then ask her where they came from and say you have way too much in that size and want to exchange them for another size. Then you can maybe sneak in there how you try not to have too many outfits in one size so that he gets to wear them all before they are outgrown. Hopefully she will understand and not take it personally.

@Anagram: that cat outfit!!!! I'm dying!!! It's so tacky, it's sort of spectacular

I totally know how you feel. My MIL buys so much stuff that I don't like/want. Lots of out of season stuff from the clearance rack at Target. I like dressing her in stuff that she looks cute in- I like simple stuff- not lots of words or characters.

@Smurfette: yup. Me too. If it has tags and I don't like/need it I return.

I have 3 drawers for the current size. Stuff I love- this is what I dress her in, backups and sleepers. 75% of the backups will go to consignment.

LO's wardrobe is made up of lots of crazy stuff. I'm not that into style so I'll use pretty much whatever as long as the fabric feels nice (I totally project my sensory issues on LO).

@CakeLady: I try to gently guide our major clothing gifters by dropping little hints. "Oh, I really liked X, that brand fits LO really well." "I love the plain blue onesie you gave LO, it goes with everything. Solid colors make it so easy to dress LO."

I have a few avenues of dealing with this issue:

1) Daycare backup clothes
2) General backup clothes, she wears it anyway
3) If it tags on it, I’ll generally save it for Christmas time to donate to specific families sponsored by my work (our department alone sponsors 6-8 families, and generally at least 1 of them has a LO in LO’s size, or a baby who will shortly be that size).
4) Donate to local domestic violence shelter for women and children

@Anagram: LOL that is amazing.

One set in the diaper bag, one set for daycare. The rest get worn maybe once so that I can say she wore it. Then when it's outgrown, it gets donated.

ill try to return or use for backup. Now that we're having DD2, I'm gonna go through DD1's old stuff and cull what I really didn't like. She had so many different clothes that we didn't use that I'm fine getting rid of the unloved items.