How to Deal Once and for all with the Mounds of Clothes in a Kids Room
From It's Here…Somewhere
Alice Fulton-Osborne
Pauline Hatch
After all the child's clothes are gathered, you will put them in 5 categories:
1 Play clothes
2 School clothes
3 Dressy clothes
4 Hand-me-downs (quality keepers that no longer fit anyone, but will eventually)
5 Discards (those that go either to charity or the garbage)
Use these categories as you streamline. A child's basic needs include eight pair of socks and underwear.If you wash at least once a week, then he only needs seven play outfits and maybe one dressy outfit. However, if you're a mom on the run, working outside the home, and the laundry is left up to you, then perhaps a week's worth of these basics is not enough. You may want a few extra pairs of underwear and socks, and an extra play outfit or two, just as a cushion against getting behind in the laundry department. We also recognize that clothes are a VITAL part of a teenager's life and that they (especially girls) think they need tons. So be it...as long as the TONS are make up of keepers and there are adequate places to house all of it.
We have found that putting socks, underwear and small like items stay more in control if smaller containers such as shoe boxes are put in the drawers for that purpose.
Everywhere we go, people ask us what to do with their mountains of hand-me-downs. Here are three rules:
1 Keep only quality. Don't store play clothes because the child is constantly in the process of creating new ones.
2 Mend keepers before storing
3 Store efficiently. If storing in a container put a number on that container and a corresponding number on a 3x5 card or in your computer. This way the storage area does not become a mess searching for a particular item. On the card or in your computer list specifically the contents of each container. This is true with any container for storage.
Additional information is in our book on what to do with games, books, sports equipment etc. Check it out. You can purchase it from our site by contacting one of us.
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