Managing Clothes for the Large Family

You know you have a large family when...

...your children feel sorry for families with only six or seven children.
...people ask if you're competing with the Duggars.
...even your friends aren't sure how many children you have.
...your family no longer fits in a 15 passenger van.
..complete strangers feel welcome to comment on your fertility and contraceptive methods.
...two of your daughters go for a walk...and get asked by a neighbor if they're foster kids.
...you have to carry three health insurance cards in your wallet- because that's how many it takes to fit everyone's name.
...you take the wrong child to the dentist...simply because your handwriting on the calendar was messy and both started with a "j".
...grocery shopping for 30 children and 12 adults for a two day camp constitutes a "small" shopping trip for you.
You find yourself relating some small incident to your husband and starting with the words, "Well, I only boiled twenty-six eggs for breakfast..."
...you buy a 40 pound box of bananas intending to make banana bread and freeze a bunch for smoothies...but your children eat them all first.
...you find an afternoon root canal relaxing.
...it takes you twenty-three minutes on the phone to schedule your children's dental appointments.
...you've given up on using your toaster entirely and make all of your toast under the broiler in you oven.
...you are seriously tempted by the stacking cribs you see at Goodwill for $19.99.
...you find yourself thinking, "Wow, the house is so quiet and peaceful with only nine children".
...you have enough children to constitute not one, but TWO large families.
...you have a laundry basket devoted entirely to lonely socks seeking their mate.
...when you got to buy your children those cool "spin toothbrushes" because you think they get their teeth so much cleaner...but the store doesn't carry enough styles/colors for your children to each have a different toothbrush.
...when you can't take all of your children to the doctor's office at the same time because the waiting room has only 10 seats.
...when you still have seven children that are required by law to sit in a carseat or booster seat.
...you call the doctor to get your children tetnus shots, and they tell you they don't have enough in the office and need to order more from the health department.
...you take up more than one entire pew in church.
...you take only half of your children to the library, and STILL get asked if they're all yours.
...you go to fill your children's flouride prescription at the phamacy and you clean them out of every pill they have...and it's still not enough.
...you spend sixty dollars on socks...and not everyone gets new socks.
...you go shopping at Costco and the cashier asks if you're having a soccer barbecue.

April 17, 2010

{Please excuse the lousy snapshots, I simply put on my kit lens to give me the adjustable focal length I needed and put it in auto. These ought to be a good lesson in what lousy pictures a "nice camera" can take!}

Yesterday was actually warm enough that I sat out on the deck and soaked up the sunshine. Then I got inspired (I am pregnant and nesting after all) to look for sandals for my children. Managing clothes for a large family can be a bit crazy. We have system however, that has been working for years for our family.

In our current house we have a lovely, large storage room. Chuck tells me its actually a six foot crawl space, and I believe him, cause I know nothing about these things. Anyway, it is where we store all of our extra clothing and shoes.

We store dozens of pairs of shoes on these rickety old shelves. 90% of these have been given to us as hand-me-downs, and the other 10% we've purchased. When someone needs new shoes, the first thing we do is check in the storage room. If there is nothing that fits, or nothing that is appropriate, we head to the store...note- this photo does not include boots or sandals. Sandals are stored in a large, round tub.

Boots are on the other side of the room.

Yesterday, we pulled out the sandals and actually had enough that everyone got a nice pair! No sandal shopping for us this year.

(On a side note, Avi had a ball seeing how many pairs of shoes she could balance on!)

And this is where we store our out-of-season clothes and clothes that don't fit. Each bin is labeled with a number. We keep an inventory in the house of what is in each bin, such as: girl's summer clothes, boy's church clothes, boy's pants, sizes 4-10, etc. At any given time, we can check a bin, and know within five minutes whether or not we have an item in that size. It is wonderful! There have been mornings when I've run down before church and grabbed a new pair of church pants for one of the boys, or a new dress for one of the girls. That's how efficient this system is.

Pretty? No. Effective? Yes.

Twice a year (spring and fall) we bring all of the bins up to our deck (the storage room is too small to do any sorting down there). We pack away the out of season clothes, bring up the in season clothes, and decide what is getting packed away, and what is too warn out to justify saving any longer. At that time we make a list of any items we still need to purchase (i.e. t-shirts for Avi, shorts for Enoch)...

Simple. Efficient. And Ugly.

It works for us.

07:35 AM in Large Family | Permalink

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