Calming the Chaos – Organizing Clothing

When you have 7 people in a house you have lots of clothing that needs to be easily accessed on a daily basis and then also even more clothing that is either in the wrong sizes or season that is in long term storage. So, how does on go about maintaining order in this jungle of clothing? Here is how I do organize clothing in our home.

1. Limit the clothing that each person has in their closet at any given time. Especially for the children I try to keep only 3 play outfits per child and then 5-7 dress up outfits for each. I do allow more dress up clothing because we use them for every church service and we are still fairly committed to our skirt wearing while in public for the girls and I. The variety is nice and since we have been blessed with many hand me downs I try to keep a few more options so that they don’t wear out as quickly and can be passed down to the next child in line.

2. In my basement I have a closet that is full of stacks and stacks of rubbermaid tubs. Each tub holds a size or two of a certain gender clothing. Some sizes have more clothing, because frankly little guys just need more clothes than older ones do. But by storing the clothes I only have to buy things once. If I am out at consignment shops or whatever and find something really nice for a great price I will pick it up and add it to the tub. That way each child has nice good clothes and we don’t ever have to make a costly clothing purchase all at once.

Organize clothing

3. It is winter here in the midwest and that means cold weather. And with this season comes a need for hats, gloves, coats, scarves, and boots. And they need to be easily reached each time we walk out the door. But I quickly got tired of the piles and piles everywhere. So I got some wall mount coat racks at Target (only about $20) and a nice large wicker basket (a wedding shower gift years ago) to help calm the chaos. So the piles all over the floor turned into this………

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And that my friends are a few of the ways that I calm the chaos of clothing for my family of 7 (soon to be 8) in a three bedroom house. Do you store clothing to pass from one child to the next or do you buy new for each child?

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