I love Becky and her super organizing skills! She rocks my world. I've got a tip, though, that even Becky may not have tried (If you've tried it Becky, throw me a bone and act surprised). Years ago I came up with a way to get the boys dressed in the mornings without the hassle of having to stand right there and say, "Did you change your underwear?" "Are those clothes clean?" "That shirt doesn't match those pants." I went to IKEA (otherwise known as heaven on earth) and bought heavy cardboard boxes that would fit on the shelves in my boys' room. Each boy has 6 boxes....one for each day of the week except Sunday. Each box has a day of the week printed on it (I used my handy dandy label maker, also know as my BFF). The blue labels are for Elijah and the white labels are for Adam.
Now, here's what I do: On Sunday afternoons the boys and I go into their room and they start getting out the clothes they want to wear all week. They put them into little piles and I sit with the boxes. One at a time they bring me their choices of clothing for each day. Sometimes I will veto a choice (one boy in particular likes to wear some odd color combinations) but I will try to let them make most of the decisions. Then I put the clothes for each day, including socks and underwear, into each box and set it on the shelf.
Every morning they open the box for that day and put on everything in the box. Every night when they undress their clothes go straight into the laundry hamper. Dirty, not dirty, doesn't matter. Hamper. Then the next day they pull out the box for that day. Easy as pie.
When the clean clothes come out of the laundry they go back into the drawers (you can see a peek of our elfa drawers on the left) and wait to be pulled out again on Sunday afternoon. Why, you may ask, do I not have a box for Sunday? Good question....you all are so inquisitive! Well there are 2 reasons. 1) I keep the Sunday clothes hanging in the closet so they don't need a box then after church the boys can put on whatever they want and 2) IKEA sold these boxes in sets of 3 and I didn't want to buy an extra set. I'm cheap. I have used this system for at least 10 years now and it has worked marvelously. And if I haven't yet convinced you let me add this priceless bit of information: if you do this you will never again discover that it has been 10 days since a child has changed his underwear and it is to the point of standing up on its own. Gross? Maybe. But let's face it...it happens. Try it. You won't be disappointed.
Lisa is amazing! I'm so blessed to know her! You can too...she is an amazing writer, as well as a mother to all those kids! She makes me laugh out loud just about every time I read her stuff. Thank you, Lisa!!
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