Daily life is so much easier when clothes are clean and ready to wear. Trying to rush out the door to work or church or your volunteer spot is smoother when you can go straight to your closet and your clothes are ready to put on.
The same premise is true for your children. The time to get the dance outfit ready is not at 5:30 when ballet class starts at 6:00. You don’t want to discover at 5:30 that tights have runs in them or her leotard has been at the bottom of a smelly clothes heap since last week.
The Solution
This one tip is going to make your children’s extracurricular activities more fun and less stressful:
Store all of the outfit pieces together on the same coat hanger.
This is a no-fail way to ensure getting out the door to the game is a breeze instead of a rushed, hurried event. It accomplishes two things:
1) All of the pieces of the uniform are in one spot –not scattered between the laundry room, the bathroom floor and your child’s room. The endless searching for a lone t-ball sock never happens.
2) He knows exactly where his uniform pieces are and can quickly get it on without help from an adult.
So in this picture, you’ll see that I hang my son’s entire T-ball uniform on the same hanger in his closet. T-ball pants on the bottom and socks on the side. Then I neatly hang the shirt on top of the whole thing. If I could pry his T-ball hat from his head, it would go over the top of the hanger too.
Shoes are not stored with the rest of the uniform. In our house, all shoes are kept on the shoe shelf by the back door so he should (the key word here) always know where his cleats are before the big game.
I also use this all-in-one hanger trick for Sunday mornings also. I kid you not that 8:00-9:00 am on Sunday morning is one of the busiest times of our week. It’s so hard to get out of the door on time! Ack.
On Fridays, I typically pull what the girls are going to wear for church on Sunday before the Sunday morning chaos begins. I put everything on one hanger: dress, bloomers, tights, sweater. And if it is an outfit that has a matching hair bow, I pin it to the top of the dress so we don’t have to hunt for it when it’s time to walk out the door.
I can’t even describe to you how much easier this makes my Sunday Morning life.
With three little girls, there is a ridiculous amount of hair bows, tights, shoes, bloomers… And trying to find them all at the last minute? It’s enough to make you want to just skip it and stay home.
But this doesn’t just apply to t-ball uniforms and Sunday morning clothes. Use this technique for football uniforms, school uniforms, tap class, drama practice. Think through your weekly laundry plan, and then ensure all of your family’s needed outfits are hanging in one spot.
You’re going to love your results.
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We take this one step further–soccer uniform gets stored in the tote we take to the games, gymnastics & dance clothes get stored in the bag I take, etc. I started storing the clothes together and then moved on to putting them in the bags. Inevitably, something would fall off the hanger and get misplaced or a sock would get left behind when I moved the stack of clothes or something.
Thats a great idea of hanging everything together…
I do this with everyday outfits. Sort of. I put the pants and the tops on the same hanger. It makes finding the perfect outfit much simpiler for my 4 and 5 year olds. this way they can wear what they want and it will match, the only rule is the whole outfit has to come from 1 hanger, no mixing and matching until they figure out that polka dotted skirts do not match camoflauge tops 🙂
Oh you smart mama 😉 I’ve considered doing this for daily clothes, but we just don’t have the closet space for the girls. I think it’s a great idea though!
-Lauren
I love the organization of all you determined Mamas!
Always good ideas.