Clothes Master : Anita Nelson is second to none when it comes to sniffing out inexpensive clothing, mending them and cleaning them. She has to be. She’s got 10 kids.

Anita Nelson, mother of 10 kids, moves mountains. Mountains of dishes. Mountains of toys. And mountains of clothes.

To be exact, Nelson hustles six loads of clothes seven nights a week: dresses, jeans, T-shirts, leggings, blouses, shorts, shirts, tank tops, sweaters, underwear, sweats, trousers, pajamas, boxer shorts, nightgowns, socks, jumpsuits.

“Clothes are a big issue in this family,” says Nelson, 36. “I’m always doing clothes--buying them, mending them, and passing them onto the next kid in line. When you’ve got a 4-month-old to a 17-year-old, clothes are a forever thing.”

And a hot topic in and out of the Nelsons’ San Pedro home at Ft. MacArthur, where Air Force Sgt. Jay Nelson, 36, works as a computer programmer.

“People are always asking: ‘How do you do it? A big family like yours. Clothes are expensive and besides that, where do you keep it all?’ ”

Nelson smiles as she prepares to reveal her family secrets.

“Come with me,” orders Major Mom, as she begins her tour of the family’s five-bedroom condo.

Closets are neatly packed with hanging clothes and boxes that are filled with more clothes. Plump laundry baskets are stuffed with sneakers and sandals and squeezed underneath beds. Dressers are lined side by side by side in an upstairs utility closet because there is no room for them in bedrooms.

“My first rule is this: I don’t iron. I hate it,” says Nelson. “So I don’t go for satin and silky things for my kids.”

Her second rule: “I don’t have a ‘system.’ I’ll buy just about every item of clothing I can afford because I know it will fit someone.”

Nelson recalls a story about her mother, June, buying 20 pairs of shoes--at $2 a pop--on sale a few months ago. “My mom was standing at my front door with all these shoes in her arms. ‘Anita,’ she said, ‘I know a pair of these will fit someone.’ ” That someone might be Seth, 4 months; Grace, 4; Mary, 5; Emma, 7; Sarah, 9; Hannah, 11; Elizabeth, 13; Nathan, 15; Adam, 16, or Julie, 17. Nelson has other rules to live by: Shop yard sales and discount clothing chains; buy items in bulk such as socks and underwear; decorate inexpensive T-shirts with decals and fabric paints; stitch lace, buttons and ribbons onto socks to make them look expensive; sew your own clothes, and take special care with the laundry so clothes can be handed down in good condition.

The kids--or most of them anyway--have adopted a “yours, mine and ours” attitude, she says.

“One of the girls will say, ‘This is mine but you can wear it.’ They’re real good about sharing.”

The older children--Elizabeth, Nathan, Adam and Julie--buy all of their own clothes with money earned from baby-sitting, cleaning horse stables, paper routes and yardwork. When they’ve got the cash, they like to hit the malls and discount clothing stores. But they never spend more than $30 to $40 at a time. And like mom, they’re always on the lookout for a bargain.

“As far as clothes go, I have quite a bit--my own, my mom’s and my sister Elizabeth’s that I can borrow,” says Julie, who graduated from San Pedro High School last year and is saving for college while working at a fast-food restaurant. “I try not to buy too much because we’re also limited with space here,” she adds.

Hannah pays particular attention to her older sisters’ outfits “because one day I’ll be wearing them.”

The 11-year-old shares her room--and its double closet--with sisters Sarah and Emma. “This is how we do it,” says Hannah, as she slides the closet door open to reveal three sets of clothes: sizes 10 to 12 (Hannah’s), 8 to 10 (Sarah’s), and 6 to 8 (Emma’s). Older sister Elizabeth also shares the other end of the closet, but camps out with Julie in a downstairs dining room that has been converted into a bedroom. Mary and Grace share a bedroom and a dresser upstairs. And Julie keeps her hanging clothes in Mary and Grace’s closet.

“It’s like a puzzle here,” Hannah explains and then, in a Vanna White imitation motions to six rows of footgear hanging on a shoe rack attached to the inside of the utility closet door.

Hannah and her two roommates walk in and stand near their dressers. Behind them are shelves filled with toys.

“This one’s mine,” points out Emma. “And that one’s Sarah’s and that one’s Hannah’s. And this,” she says trying to open a stuck drawer “is our sock drawer.”

Hannah manages to loosen the drawer open. Voila! Socks--from whites to neon, ruffled to striped, ankle to knee-high--pop out. It’s the only drawer shared by the three. The others are crammed with jeans, T-shirts and sleep wear.

“Even though we have our own dressers, we still share the clothes,” says Hannah. She pulls out an oversized shirt. “We share stuff like this all the time. The only thing we don’t share is the underwear. We all have our own.”

Occasionally, Hannah and the younger girls tag along with the older Nelson girls at the mall. But their mother prefers to bargain hunt at yard sales, never spending more than $30 on her weekend forays--”unless the younger kids need something and I haven’t found it at a yard sale, then we go out and get it.”

Nelson says if it weren’t for yard sales in nearby Palos Verdes and Rancho Palos Verdes--and her savvy on her Bernina sewing machine--it would be next to impossible to clothe 10 children.

Case in point: Seth’s jumpsuit.

“I paid 25 cents for it. It’s an OshKosh. That’s some expensive label,” Nelson says. “All it needed was a button.” But instead of just adding another plain-old button, Nelson replaced it and the others with new, colorful ones. She also added piping on the hem and turned something used into something that looks almost new.

Nelson stresses that she takes special care with the laundry. “I have clothes I have passed down to three, four, five of the girls because of the care I give the clothes. Now, the boys, that’s another matter.”

Her sons, Adam and Nathan, “are the Felix Unger and Oscar Madison” of the Nelson household. Their taste in threads is like the room they share--one side neat, the other messy. Nathan leans toward the big baggy, saggy look of jeans and shirts he buys at a nearby surf and skate shop with money from his $5-an-hour yard work. Adam sticks with Levis and T-shirts his own size and sweat shirts emblazoned with collegiate emblems.

When the occasion calls for it, the brothers share their shirts and trousers.

“I’ll let my brother wear a church shirt or borrow a tie or pants to go to a dance,” Adam says, adding that he fully inspects the items after they’ve been worn for stains or rips.

Says his mother: “That’s my Adam. He’ll be in there rubbing a stain-removing stick over a spot.”

She says she is grateful that her kids take care of their clothes most of the time and that her kids--except, perhaps, for Nathan--do not feel pressured to follow trends, “because trendy clothes can be quite expensive.”

“Being we have a big family, I don’t want my kids to feel like they are poor or orphans. I don’t want the younger ones to feel like they’re always going to get the hand-me-downs. They get them, but they also get a few new things now and then,” she says.

And how about mom and dad?

“Let me put it this way,” says Nelson, laughing. “I have my maternity clothes and my not-pregnant wardrobe. I don’t buy much for myself except for T-shirts and stretch pants a couple of times a year because I prefer to make my own dresses. For $50 in fabric and supplies, I can sew two spring dresses and two winter dresses, a few blouses and some jumpers and I’m set for the year.”

Nelson says her husband doesn’t have to wear a military uniform on the job, but “has to have nice shirts and ties.” She can pick up a shirt and tie set for about $25 at a discount store or the base exchange.

“My husband and I sacrifice for the kids first. Not long ago, my mother bought me some really nice shoes and some casual ones I can wear with slacks because I never buy them. I would rather give to the kids.

“But a lot of times the kids ask for things they can’t get. Adam wants every new pair of Nikes that come out. I tell him, ‘Well, go get yourself a little job. Earn the shoes.’ Another might want a pair of Guess? jeans. If there’s money for it, fine, but if there isn’t, you learn pretty fast that another brand looks just as nice.

“The kids have pretty good taste. They know how to coordinate their outfits well. And they know how important it is to take care of their clothes. Even my little girls Grace and Mary, they will hop up on the table, take off a shirt they’ve spilled something on, and rub detergent on it before it goes into the laundry. They’ve seen Adam and the older girls do it. I think they’ve learned the most important thing about their clothes, whether it came from a yard sale or Mervyn’s--have pride in them.”

Buying for 12What It Costs:

So how much does it cost to clothe 10 kids and a set of parents for one year? Here’s how it breaks down in the Nelson family:

* Shoes: $791

* Socks: $150

* Undergarments: $213

* Clothing: $1,100

(Includes $300 for the six youngest children; $100 for Elizabeth, 13; $100 for Nathan, 15; $200 for Adam, 16; $100 for Julie, 17; $100 for Anita Nelson; and $200 for Jay Nelson.)