Fall Clothes

Today I finished the MONUMENTAL task of changing all the kids' closets from summer to winter clothes. Although we are still having summer weather (it's a gorgeous day today, low 70s, not humid, and earlier in the week we had hot and humid weather like August) I like to do this at the end of September--because halter tops and sundresses are now past their prime, even if it is hot. I left some T shirts, shorts, capri pants and short sleeve dresses for this kind of in-between weather, but the true summer clothes had to go.

The reason it was a monumental job rather than just a time-consuming task was because I was pretty disorganized before now. The challenge with having several kids in different sizes is to resist just boxing everything they aren't wearing up wholesale and throwing it in the attic--which is what I had done. Part of this is not my fault--my sister gives us lots of bags of beautiful clothes from her kids, so I had bag after bag of unknown sizes scattered around. When Rachel needed new jeans, I pawed through bags but didn't necessarily find every pair that would fit, and found myself going through the same bags time after time, not remembering what size was where.

So in the past week I have gone through EVERY box and bag in the attic. I have sorted them into piles by size and now have them marked: Girls 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (why is there no 9?), 12, 14, 16, etc. and Boys 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 (still no 9!) There are also boxes for each kid full of summer clothes that I think will still fit them next spring/summer--and if I'm wrong, it will be simple to sort them into the appropriate box. The only exception is dresses--we have lots of dresses that are marked, say size 6, but I remember that Julia could easily wear them at 4 years old. So I cheated and put stuff like that in the box of 4's. There is also a gigantic bag of shoes for Emma (and a few for Ben) to grow into, and a smaller bag for Julia to grow into that were Rachel's. Plus I got a shopping bag of Emma's and Ben's outgrown clothes (no child to pass them to in THIS house!) to give to either my niece Emily for her daughter, or my friend Jenn for her baby daughter, or her 3 year old son. AND a huge garbage bag of stuff that I need to sort by size (sigh) and then put up on freecycle....

While doing this, I also (with Rachel and Julia's help) reorganized the 2nd floor closet--a walk-in that Rachel, Julia and to a far lesser extent Ben all share. It was a NIGHTMARE of dress-up clothes, toys, shoes that nobody wears, single slippers (where are the mates? I have no clue...) and of course, clothes that fell off their hangers and were left on the floor. Part of this problem is due to the fact that Rachel's dresser doesn't hold all her clothes--Julia and Ben have the built-in dressers that are absolutely huge, but hers is a regular one, and she has so many clothes they just don't fit. After cleaning the closet out, we brought two sets of those Rubbermaid storage drawers up and put them in the closet, so Rachel has overflow drawers for sweaters and pants. This should help immensely.

Two more tasks--I want to reorganize the coat closet, because when we moved into the house we sort of threw everything in there and it's a mess, plus I know that there are lots of baby hats and too-small boots that can be cast away. Now that we're using the garage as a mud room, we can change around that closet to only have the minimum gear in it and move all the raincoats, boots, hats, scarves and mittens to the mud room--plus I'm going to hang all the extra coats from the bar in the attic that is now cleared of stuff. (Another question: why do we have so many coats? Emma herself has 8, plus 2 raincoats!)

Since we moved in, the closet in the master bedroom has been a mess, too. There's a shelf at the top that is bowed because the wood is probably 50 years old. Ever since we moved in, we have been meaning to fix that and because it hasn't been done yet, I never organized the closet much. We also have a laundry basket in there full of painting clothes for myself and Matt--we repainted the entire house when we moved in, plus have done some other paint projects--and in October we are painting the exterior of the house--but they really don't need to be at the bottom of the closet anymore and we could probably find a use for the laundry basket! Matt has promised to replace that shelf tomorrow, so then I could use my shelf dividers for sweaters, have more room to hang clothes, get rid of the painting clothes from the bottom, reorganize all my shoes, and take out summer clothes of ours.

This is the kind of thing that doesn't have much importance in the grand scheme of things, but it makes you feel like you've accomplished a lot when it's over!

Jen