Padlocked Dressers, Anyone?
OK- today. A very long day. Had one shall-be-nameless kid determined to harass everyone within half a mile. Doubtless the child will be our next puker-- or so I make excuse for the child's very bad behavior.Got through dinner, told the younger ones to get PJ's on. Finally it was time to go tuck them into bed. Only I couldn't GET into the bedrooms-- not without tripping over all manner of flotsam and jetsam anyway. Seems when I'd told them to clean their rooms earlier in the day, they-- well, I suspect they actually hucked more rubbish around the room, but that is probably a very uncharitable thought on my part. They didn't clean anyway.
So-- we dug out the bedrooms-- kind of. Am just amazed at the number of items of clothing I picked up off the three year old's floor. Of course it doesn't help that she often changes her clothes 3 times in a day, just for the sheer joy of twirly skirts and frills and variety in dressing.
Am seriously thinking of padlocks for her dresser. It would make my life so much easier to just dole the clothes out morning and evening. But it would take so much joy from her life-- I just don't know if I could do it.
Yesterday she found a lacy size 18-month sweater and put it onto her size 5 self over a t-shirt. We laughed at first, then realized it looked exactly like one of those 'shrugs' that are so stylin' these days. That child!
Anyway, though the bedrooms are safe to walk through, they need some more work. I've declared tomorrow morning to be a bedroom day for the younger ones and me. We need to weed out some clutter, along with outgrown clothes, etc. Once again I will try to put the stamp of organization on their space. Makes me think longingly of pioneer days when kids had two outfits apiece, one book, and a toy or two if they were lucky.
So--- what is YOUR best secret for bringing order to the chaos of kids stuff?
posted by owlhaven @ 9:41 PM
4 Comments:
Ahhhh..
The job of children's closets, dressers and clothing. It is never-ending, or so it seems.
I don't have a great method, so I look forward to reading other comments.
I hate to admit it, but we DID lock our girls' closets for awhile. They were going through a "dump everything out" phase. It worked. They had to ask to get toys out, and then they could have more when the first ones were put away. I'd like to say it taught them to pick up after themselves, but it didn't.
Good luck!
I quit using dressers. I hang everything up, except undies and pj's. When they were trustworthy, lol, I added sections that hung low enough for them to reach. If they couldn't be trusted, everything was hung on the top rack. The girls especially loved seeing everything hung up and for the most part I didn't find things on the floor very often after that.
Maybe you really could lock your daughter's dresser and make a little dress-up box for her. (Like you have spare time, I know -- hey, you could delegate this to one of your teens!) When we were kids, my mom put her old turbans and wraps (it was the sixties and seventies, you know) and even swatches of fabric in a box covered with contact paper and we played with those clothes all the time, putting on shows and whatnot. I bet your daughter would get a real kick out of it and it might be more fun than trying on her own clothes. There's still the clean-up issue, of course, but the clean laundry might stay in the dresser at least. :-)
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