A Good Idea

When Avery was 3 years old, she went through a phase where she changed her clothes several times a day. She'd get a drop of water on her shirt, and she'd have to change it. She'd decide that the outfit she had on really wasn't what she wanted to wear after all. She'd play dress up then get an entirely new outfit afterwards. She'd throw some of it back into her drawers. Some of it got thrown in the bottom of her closet. Most of it got thrown on the floor. I never knew if the clothes were actually dirty, or if she just got tired of wearing them and they were still clean. So, I came up with the great idea to make Avery start washing all of her own laundry. At first, she thought this was fun. But soon thereafter, the novelty wore off and she realized that washing all her laundry was not fun. Problem solved!


Well this is another one of my better ideas, I must admit, because it truly has worked out great and helped to solve a big problem. Right before Avery started Kindergarten, she and I had a disagreement on what was (and was not) acceptable school attire. In a heated moment, I took all of the clothes out of Avery's closet (which was no easy task), and told her that we were going to stay in her bedroom until we found several outfits that we could both agree upon and be happy with for her to wear to school. And so we set about making "acceptable" school outfits. Everything that Avery and I agreed upon got hung on the top closet bar. Everything that we could not agree upon or that she absolutely could not wear to school but she could wear at home, got hung on the bottom bar. By the way, I bought this closet bar from The Container Store for only $9.99. It basically doubles the amount of hanging space in a closet, and I love it because it's super easy to install and you get twice as much hanging space in a closet in a matter of seconds!


So that day, we made several acceptable school outfits together. And then we agreed that every Sunday afternoon, she would venture into her closet and pick out 5 outfits from the "acceptable" top closet bar for her to wear throughout the following school week.
This worked like a charm! After she would wear an outfit, I would hang it back up as an outfit towards the back of her closet so that we would know she'd already worn it (because wearing a favorite outfit several times in a week was also a big problem we needed to deal with). Every Sunday, she'd pick out another 5 outfits, without any confusion or frustration. It was splendid!


So the week before Avery started 1st grade, I told her what I was about to do (go put together outfits for school), and she got so excited. I love this idea! And I do it for Samuel's clothes too, even though the boy would pretty much wear anything I put in front of him, just as long as he doesn't have to pick it out himself...


Ahhh...

No more morning squabbles about what Avery can and can't wear. No more fumbling around in an unorganized, cluttered closet in the midst of our morning madness, trying to match a pink polka dot shirt that she is absolutely determined to wear, even though the color pink in the shirt is the strangest color pink I've ever seen and I can not possibly match it to anything in her closet. No more morning stress and anxiety centered around clothes. Yea!


This year, I also added a daily organizer hanging shelf. I bought it from Lillian Vernon. It lists the days of the week and has a separate compartment for each day. Avery has P.E. on certain days of the week. I put several dresses and skirts in the daily compartments on days when she does not have P.E., so that there's also no problems with Avery wanting to wear a dress on a P.E. day. Yet another big morning fight over clothes, squashed!


I share this with you all because this has truly set me free! I would have started this when Avery was a preschooler and was first trying to assert her fashion independence, if only I would have thought of it back then. We could have avoided so many morning power struggles this way.

Now, if only I could get my own closet organized!