Organising kids clothes for large families

Recently the 3 older boys decided that they wanted share a bedroom so a big reshuffle took place to make them happy. I wasn't too concerned though because come summer we will only need to run one air-conditioner for them rather than 3. Win Win.

But the room they moved into didn't have wardrobes so the boys' clothes stayed in their old rooms. There seemed to be clothes spread everywhere so it was time for a big sort out. I stripped one of their old rooms and have made it into a dressing room for them.

 I placed all the t-shirts, shorts, long sleeved shirts and tracksuit pants in these wire baskets. The bottom row is all size 6, the next row up is size 7, the next row up is size 8, etc, etc.  I decided to put the smaller sizes at the bottom and largest at the top because the 8yo can't reach the top so his clothes are at the bottom.

 I really love how this has worked out because as the boys grow then they just start taking clothes out of the next basket above. Previously I would have had to empty cupboards and move them into the next child's room. And then sort out their clothes, etc.  Also with the baskets I can easily see which basket looks like it needs a refill of new clothes. For example I thought I had a lot of size 14 clothes for one of the bigger twins but I realised that I  have very few shorts for him. I can also see that we have quite a lot in some sizes and I do not need to purchase any more of those unless at some point they get damaged or stained.

This type of organising wont suit all families but if you have lots of kids or kids around the same sizes then this is something that is working well for us and may work for you too.

In the dressers I have placed pj's, underwear, swimmers, jeans and hats. The jumpers, jackets and dress shirts are in the wardrobe. The school uniforms are in there too. I placed an empty laundry basket in the room and so far the boys are placing the clothes in there without any nagging. There have been no discarded clothes on the floor.

I am planning on adding a mirror and possibly some boy's fashion photos to make it look more like a dressing room. It would be awesome to make it look like a Hollywood movie dressing room. But that wont be happening any time soon as I have quite a few other projects to tackle first.

Another trick I do to make sorting clothes easier to to buy dozens of identical socks for the boys. I then don't have to worry about trying to match pairs. Every sock in the draw will match. Then when the socks are looking grotty I throw the whole lot out and replace them again with dozens of identical socks.