Kids' Closet

For nearly a year I've been struggling with where I keep the kids' clothes.  I was keeping Tracey clothes in the room she shares with the twins.  I was keeping the twins' clothes in the nursery where Lee Lee sleeps.  And I was keeping Lee Lee's clothes in my dresser in my room.

Whenever I managed to actually fold clean clothes, I could only put clothes away when all children were awake.  But I usually only folded clothes when children were asleep... then I would just have six piles of clean clothes waiting somewhere for the right window when I could try to get the clothes in the right room and dresser when the right child was awake before the children play with the pile of folded clean clothes.

It was not working.

Late one night, when I think I was panicking... I mean praying about directing the Christmas Pageant, God gave me the great idea to transform our hall closet into a kid's closet.

Here is what the closet used to look like:

Here is what it looks like now: 

Each child gets three bins of clothes -- one bin for underwear and undershirts, one bin for shirts/dresses, one bin for pants.  There is one shared bin with all the pairs of socks.  Lee Lee has two extra bins for pajamas and fancy dresses.  THEY ONLY GET THE CLOTHES IN THOSE BINS!  If they have more shirts than fits in the one bin... that child and I choose our favorite shirts because there is only one bin for shirts for that child.

I can put away laundry ANYTIME regardless of who is sleeping, and I put all laundry away in ONE LOCATION!

Also, the kids get so excited to choose their own clothes.  They know what bins are theirs and they can access them, choose clothes, and put them back.  The closet is in the hallway so there is NO OPTION to leave clothes all over or not replace their bins back in the closet.  We walk through that hallway all day -- it has to stay in order.

It has been amazing!