• Organized Chaos: Kid’s Closets

    Organized Chaos - Kids - Closet - Clothes - Room - Shoes - Dresser - Cabinet - Toys - Shoes - Crafts - Organized - Clean - Bookshelf - P1350794c

     What a mess!

    We live in a home with imperfect people.  Life has a way of getting messy.  Over time the busy messiness of life over spills into other areas such as our closets.  It happens to all of us, including our kids.

    On this particular day when I opened the closet I noticed several things out of place – clothes out of their specific baskets, shoes not lined up, headbands askew, and the hair accessories organizer not even hung up, hang up clothes in the wrong spots, crafts all out of sorts, and more disorganization.

    Thankfully with the system we have in place it usually doesn’t take too long to get everything back in shape and looking good again.  The kids are not always “excited” about cleaning out their closets, but they do enjoy it once it is done.  It does look much better to Momma too!

    Here are some closet organizational systems we already have in place that make the closet clean up easier:

    Once all the items listed above are checked, organized, and put back into their proper places there is only one thing left to do.  Make sure all the hanging clothes are properly on the hangers and put them in their correct places.  For our family we switch out cold and hot weather clothes depending on the season.  In South Carolina we typically have a longer warm season then some other places so we are a little heavier on the short sleeve shirts and tank tops than on the heavier winter long sleeves and sweaters.

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     I used a picture from the colder season (the long sleeves show the different sections better than pictures with tank tops).  As you can see her long sleeves / vests are on the left side of her closet with her short sleeve shirts in the middle and her dresses on the right side.  In the summer her tank tops would be on the left where her long sleeve shirts / vests are located in this picture.  We do pull out the kids winter dresses and replace them with summer dresses as well.

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     Looks so much better with everything put away and organized nicely!

  • Organized Chaos: Kids Crafts & Activities

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     Kids crafts

    Our kids love doing a variety of crafts and fun activities.  Anything from artwork to bead work to pottery and so much more!   A lot of times for their birthdays or Christmas they will get some neat crafts and activities gifts to do.

    We wanted to find a convenient place to store them until they had time to do the craft. Originally, we had all the craft items stored together in one general location, but not in their room(s).  As the girls got older we had to start putting names on the boxes or items so each one knew which ones were theirs when they went looking for a craft to do.  Since they are twins it is important as parents to make sure that each child has some items that are specifically for them. We felt like this was something easy to do regarding their crafts and it has worked out well for our family.

    Once the kids moved into their own rooms we decided to put their individual crafts on one of their higher shelves in their closets.  Each kid has their own individual craft or activity shelf so they can pick out their specific item whenever they want to do a craft.  Some of the crafts on their shelves are the same while some are completely different.  They can easily get a chair or step stool when they want to pick out a craft to do, but with the crafts being on a higher shelf it isn’t as accessible so when we have younger kids visiting the crafts stay in place and don’t get all spread out.

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     Crafts lined up, visible, and ready to be used.