When you are the mother of 6 children, you have clothes. Lots & lots of clothes!
When you don’t know if you’re having any more children or not, you tend to hang onto those clothes. Of course, anything that other kids can grow into will get saved as well!
When you hang on to those clothes, you have all sorts of sizes.
When you have all sorts of sizes, when it’s time to switch out your clothes, it takes a long time!
When it takes a long time, you may leave those clothes, sorted in all their piles in your play room with the door closed until you feel like dealing with it again. Many have spilled over to your bedroom as well and you quit noticing them because they became part of your “decor”.
When you let them sit, you don’t feel like dealing with it again and let them sit for longer than you intended to.
After a while, your husband declares that he’s ready to help with the “your bedroom” part of the equation, in the hopes that he can find his lost shoe. (which he did find….yay!)
Then, your friend offers to come and help you with a project and guess what she’ll get to do? Yes, clothes.
Yes, I’m currently living in the land of disorganization. That is something that I’ve been planning to tackle this summer and it is beginning right away! Today, after a nice Father’s Day meal with my husband and his parents AND a nice long nap with my baby and husband, I decided to tackle the clothes that have been growing in my bedroom. I have a huge stack of outgrown baby boy and toddler girl clothes. Mounds of unmatched socks. Some maternity clothes. Dirty laundry. Clean laundry. Suits that need to be hung back up. Baby clothes that fit. Gloves & Hats for the winter. Winter clothes. Coats. You name it was probably in there! There were 3 dressers stacked high with clothes that weren’t dirty but needed to be sorted and put somewhere. Yes, talk about disclosure. My room was a mess. My play room still is. Thankfully, I’m getting closer and closer to having it right again. My friend Lynn is coming over today to help me with a project and I’m going to have her help me finish up with the clothes. I hope she doesn’t mind! In fact, my mom will be keeping my baby so that I can work uninhibited! I’m so excited! 🙂
I’m in a disorganized mess. My “system” involves placing the clothes we’re not using (or the out of season clothes) in plastic bins and then placing those bins in the basement. They’re normally labeled. It has worked for me so far, but I think I need to scale back on what I keep and how I sort them all as I’m getting overwhelmed every time I pull them out. I also think I keep out too many items for one child. I always plan to keep 7-10 outfits per child, but sometimes it unintentionally turns into more than that. I’d love to have a family closet, but I haven’t figured out where to do that yet. Probably because we keep too much.
While thinking about what I should do with my mounds of clothes, I decided to read up on what some of my blogging friends are doing. Here are some good posts with lots of wonderful ideas!
Getting a Handle on Children’s clothes by Mama’s Laundry Talk
Storing Hand Me Downs by my dear friend Amy at Raising Arrows
Attacking Clothing Clutter by A Slob Comes Clean.
You may also be interested in reading 28 Days to Hope for Your Home. She also has a book called Teaching Kids to Clean that I’d like to peruse very soon!
