So where to put all the clothes in the current wardrobe? For a family with lots of children, this is an incredible volume of clothing to organize. After brainstorming ideas and doodling dozens of messy drawings and diagrams, here's how we worked it out...
We have three girls in one room and two boys in another. For us, the key to simplicity in clothing organization has been the use of wire baskets and double hanging rods. The girls’ room has two small closets. In one closet, we placed wire shelves with wire baskets attached, and these hold most folded clothing for the two oldest girls. Hanging next to the wire baskets is a suspended shoe holder that houses twelve pairs of shoes and uses only about 10 inches of width. The second closet has a double hanging rod, which is basically a low hanging rod that his hung from the main hanging rod. This gives us double the hanging space, highly valuable for three girls who love dresses! There are also two dressers. The first dresser contains all of the folded clothing of our baby daughter. The other dresser is for the nightgowns, tights, socks, underwear, belts and things belonging to the older two girls. This could all be very easily rearranged for a fourth daughter if necessary.
For the two boys, there is one large closet and one dresser. Similar to the girls’ closet, we placed a double hanging rod on one side of their closet, and wire shelves on the other side. Boys have fewer shoes, so the boys are currently able to share one big, plastic bin that sits on the floor underneath the hanging clothes. Being able to toss the shoes into the basket fits perfectly with our boys’ nature! Just like the girls, the boys’ dresser is used for pajamas, socks, underwear, hats, belts, ties, etc. Again, this could all be easily rearranged to accomodate another child.
I like wire shelves and baskets because 1) they hold many more clothes than dressers, 2) the clothes are very easy for little ones to find and put away, and 3) they are big, so they'll continue to work well with bulkier clothing when the kids are older. At that point in time we'll also probably utilize the top shelf of the closet for sweaters, jeans and such.
A few more tips for organizing children's clothing... For large families, it can be very trying and time consuming to determine which socks, tights and undergarments belong to whom. To simplify this process so that anyone can tell at a glance who the owner of an item in question is, we use what we call a “dot” system. Using a black permanent marker, we draw one dot in the back of the articles belonging to our oldest son or daughter. The second son or daughter gets two dots in their things. The third son or daughter gets three dots. Get the idea? When an article of clothing gets passed to a younger sibling, we simply have to add a dot. For dark colored items, we use a silver colored marker instead of black.
For socks, we do not mark with dots. We just ensure that each child only owns two types of socks (white and black), and that nobody's socks are exactly the same. For example, one child might have white socks with a gray stripe, another might have a red stripe, and another might have a blue stripe. This has the added benefit of making sock sorting a breeze during laundry-folding time! More about this is written in the Laundry section.
