A perk of freelancing is the pockets of free time here and there. Some hours I spend researching leads or on “professional development”–that is, learning new skills or keeping my skills sharp. Other hours I spend on projects around the house. This is one of those projects.

I had a daughter. Then I had a son. Little kids require a lot of clothes. Not because they wear them out, but rather they outgrow them so quickly. Also, it’s hard to resist buying cute outfits. It bothers me, all these clothes. I want to get as much use from them from them as possible.

Take a stroll through any kids clothing section and you’ll see there aren’t too many gender-neutral options, even for the itty-bitties. (I think the obsession with knowing the gender of babies before birth is contributing to this.) I have a few pieces of my daughter’s clothes that I have identified as gender-neutral. There are also some pieces that can be ungendered: the “girly” parts can be removed.

Observe:

First up, this striped shirt dressed up with a bright fabric flower. Two minutes with a seam ripper and it was done!

Next this piggy pajama shirt. That teeny bow at the neckline was a beast to remove! There are matching pants to this, but they didn’t have any bows to remove. I think some of the pigs in the pattern are wearing bows. Whatever, these are pajamas. No one should care.

Then there were these jeans. I removed the pink bow and the heart-shaped pockets (kids don’t need pockets, anyway). Little did I know that the pockets would reveal identically shaped spots of darker dye. There’s also pink stitching. Oh well, washing should help the heart-shapes.

I also did this. My husband had a hole in a shirt, so I removed all the buttons. You never know when you’ll need a replacement button!

Now, back to my regularly scheduled professional development. Ha!