Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The End of Morning Clothing Arguments

When the kids leave for school each morning, they must have clothes on. On this point, the Big Guy and I agree. Just what exactly they should be wearing is a point of contention. We both agree they should have matching, clean, and well-fitted clothing on that is weather appropriate. Our concepts of matching are miles apart.

Now, getting the kids out the door each day in matching (according to varying definitions), clean, and well-fitted clothing is nearly impossible. Like catching a greased pig impossible. Clean clothes suddenly disappear. Shoes migrate under large pieces of furniture. The kids will swear we never owned coats, gloves, or hats on the first cold morning. It is a some kind of law that spirit wear shirts will fall into the black hole of hell the night before they are needed- I swear they will slip their clean little cotton selves right off the hanger and just dis.a.ppear.  Gone. Vanished without a trace.

This year, I decided we would end the before-school clothing battle before it even started. The youngest kids are required to have 5 full outfits (shirt, jeans, undies, socks) on hangers, in the closet by Sunday evening. To help facilitate this unreasonable demand, I made daily organizing tags for their closets.


You can find cute little tags and beautifully organized closet spaces all over Pinterest. The clothes are all ruffly and adorable and the hangers all match. They are precious. I, was not going for precious. Nope. I was going for simple, fast, and functional. I am all about functional. (This momma ain't got time for precious.) 

I used a free CD label template in a Word document and printed 2 images to a page on colored cardstock. I spent about an hour cutting out 2 sets. I used 2 of each day (Monday through Friday plus Weekend) back-to-back and glued them together with a glue stick. I ran them through a hot laminator, 3 to a page and spent another half hour cutting the shapes from the laminate. I left a decent amount of laminate (plastic?) in the center so they would grip the closet rod. 

I figure I just saved the Big Guy and myself 171 hours of rather-poke-yourself-in-the-eye-than-search-for-another-lost-shoe early morning arguments about clothing.   

Oh, so worth it.   

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