I had grand ideas for The Unexpected Life this week. I thought hard all week over what I wanted to talk about; a tutorial for my rainbow cake, what we do for family time in our house, some sort of making this place look decent deal, instead I ended up spending half of yesterday buying shoes for the kids. Well, I spent half the afternoon fighting over a pair of shoes for my 12 year old (so glad they told us we could return them if they didn't fit right). My 4 year old wanted the prettiest red sparkly TOM shoes, but his dreams were dashed when I informed him he needed sneakers. It took him all of 5 minutes to decided on the ones that looked like lizards. Today I am just tired. I think springing forward has stolen what little mental capacity I have left. So.....as I sit here in the middle of my kitchen I start to thinking about laundry.
Laundry seems to be one of those dilemmas we all have to fight at some point in our lives, some of us on a daily basis. When I stayed at home with the kids, I didn't seem to have as much of a problem. I washed laundry daily, and for a year I even had to hang everything to dry because our dryer was broken. I'm even one of those crazies that like to do the laundry when I have the time. The problem is.......I don't seem to have any time. Where I once washed a daily, I now try to tackle everything on one day of the week. Compounding this problem we only had two laundry baskets. We used to have more, but they always ended up storing things in closets. I'm pretty sure I have at least 3 in my bedroom full of clothes I don't wear anymore. None of us have dressers (mine won't fit in the door, Thing 1's has been claimed by another family member, Thing 2's broke 3 years ago), and nothing ever gets hung up in the closet. So throughout the whole week our mountains of laundry overtake our kitchen and kitchen table. Nothing ever seems to find it's way to it's home. We are pretty lucky if out clothes even get folded. I need a solution and I need one fast.
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| Family closet from http://toomanykidsinthebathtub.blogspot.com |
I REALLY like the concept of the family closet. I have been contemplating this particular idea for probably 2 years. The more I think about it though, the less I think it would work for us. We just don't have the space for one. Our closets are our storage units. They are full of exercise equipment, Christmas decorations, and craft supplies. My oldest son has a large room, but I don't want to fill it with everyone's clothing. He's getting to be "that age", and likes to have his own space ( and I like him to go to that space and stay there on occasion haha). I even thought, well maybe we could set up some tall shelves in the kitchen and store things in hampers or bins. This idea only seemed good for a millisecond, then I knew I didn't want to look at any sort of storage in my kitchen. So, if this isn't going to work for us, I'm not sure what we really need to do. I do know that I'm not just going to sit around and wait for an epiphany.
I decided to make a preliminary game plan to climb to the summit of Mt. Laundry. It all begins with purging. I am going to go through everyone's clothing and if it doesn't fit....it's going to be donated. I'm not going hog wild with this purging, but as I wash I will pull out those items of clothing. Next, I am going to make sure those bags of clothes actually leave my house. I currently have three bags that have been sitting by the door for 2 months. I may have to employ the services of a family member to take care of this. The Salvation Army is open when I am at work, and there are no drop of locations here. Third, I am going to separate the laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer. I purchased 2 new laundry bins yesterday. There is going to be a laundry basket for myself, one for Thing 1, and 1 for Thing 2. There is also going to be a smaller bin for socks. Luckily we all have vastly different size feet and fashion sense. We won't have to separate them. Fourth, I am keeping one large hamper for our clothes to go in. It will be located in the hall by the bathroom and two of the bedrooms. This will hopefully make it more likely the clothes will be in one contained space, and will eliminate the pile in my kitchen. If we need to we can add another hamper in the hall. Last, I will keep thinking about a larger solution to our problem.
I would love to take some before pics, but I think the laundry on my kitchen table might have eaten my camera. Once I find it I will try to remember to post progress pics of our laundry issue. That is if I don't die under an avalanche of clothes.
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