Here is the before picture of his pants drawers. And yet somehow I managed to get it closed every time. This isn't all his pants though. Sometimes I leave them on top of the dresser.
And this is the after of the pants drawer. The lady's secret trick..at least for shirts and I applied them to pants..is to fold them over one more time and put them side by side instead of on top of each other. So now they are nicely organized by style and the great thing about this method is I don't have to search through any other pants to find the one I want. I just grab what I want. The other great thing about this is when I am stuff more pants in, I squish them more rather than adding to the top where it causes the drawer to go all haywire and messed up. I did learn though that cords don't roll well so they are still folded the old way. This includes the laundry that needed to be put away so it is about 5 more pants than the before photo!
And here is the after of the shirts drawer. You can see I still have more space for even more shirts. Peter (age 3) also thought this was very cool because he got to look at all the designs of his shirt before he picked out the trucks one that he wanted to wear that day.
Stay tuned...I think tomorrow is under the kitchen sink day! Or maybe the pantry..I need to see what I am going to eat for the rest of the snow days since I didn't go to the store. :)
Wow ... explain again how you fold the pants like that. I tend to shove everything in and have to do some digging to get anything out. I like the above method because you can see all your choices. I hope it is maintainable.
ReplyDeleteI found the lady's blog post where she explains how she folds her shirts and has photos too - http://organizingmadefun.blogspot.com/2010/06/bedroom-closet-clean-up-part-3-simple.html. For the pants, I think I just rolled them up to be like that. I don't think it would do it for my own pants because of wrinkles and since bigger, they would take up a lot more room but it seems to work out fine for his pants. I am a couple days in on my own shirts and I haven't noticed them any more wrinkled doing it this way.
ReplyDeleteMy kids don't have dressers i use dish pans. Each item (shirts, pants, socks) have one on shelfs in their bedrooms its wonderful because Dillon (almost 4) can put a way his clothing.
ReplyDeleteThanks Amanda. I will try that this afternoon. I also have to try to limit the amount of clothes we have. The pants drawer tends to be a big problem for us. Shirts & dresses are always hung up. I also have tons of t-shirts which the girls use to sleep in. We get them at every brain tumor or cancer event we go to - 2 each time. And we go to about one a month, so that is an extra 20 some shirts per year. I hate to throw them out, but what on earth will we do with all these?
ReplyDeleteVictoria, Part of this whole process for me is learning to be less sentimental about things. I will admit that I have way too many clothes for the kids so at the end of each season, I have started boxing them up for a friend who has a boy younger than mine. The question to ask is how many are too many shirts? Do they fit in the space that you have designated? And put a max on how many of those sentimental t-shirts you want to keep and then put the rest in goodwill! If you were really ambitious, you could try to make a quilt out of them..but I don't sew so that's not in the cards for me.
ReplyDeleteI just looked at that web site - it is really cool. My number one motivater to clean & declutter is watching Hoarders. I cannot tell you how sick it makes me to watch that show. If you do not get it on cable, you should look on the internet for some shows. You will be simultaneously spellbound and disgusted. But, every time I watch even just a few minutes of it, I am motivated to get up and clean, throw out some stuff, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn college I had a friend whose mom made a quilt out of t-shirts. Brillaint idea, but I can't even sew a button on. Not an option for me either. I am going to do the pants drawer for the girls. I am estimating that we have 40 pairs of girls' pants. And they wear skirts, dresses and shorts too. My sane, rational side says I should only have a week's worth of clothing per person. Maybe 2 weeks. I saw a hoarder show once where the dirty clothes were out of control. The organizer's solution was to severely limti the amount of clothes they had. I don't get sentimental about the clothes, I just think they are in good shape and we should keep them.
ReplyDelete