Family Closet

For years, we have had a family closet. I got this idea from the MOMYS list. I mentioned this in my post on laundry. Our family closet has varied depending on the space available and the number of children using it. We use it only for the youngest children. Right now, it’s the 3 youngest. It was the 4 youngest,  but when we rearranged recently, our 14 year old moved her clothes upstairs.

I like the family closet for a couple of reasons. When I kept clothes in the kids’ rooms, they didn’t take very good care of them. Instead of putting clean clothes away properly, they often ended up on the floor. Then, they got mixed up with the dirty clothes and I ended up getting unworn, clean clothes back in the laundry. I get really irritated when clean clothes end up in the laundry pile. And, it seems that clothes in the kids’ bedrooms are just a recipe for a mess. So, we keep the bedrooms for beds, the kids’ personal belongings and a few toys.

After I’ve washed and sorted the laundry, the big folks take their laundry to their bedroom. The littles put their clothes away in the family closet. We have an alcove in our garage that we are using for the family closet now. I will admit it doesn’t always stay clean. My wonderful husband helped the little guys clean up the area the other day. So, I took advantage of the cleaning job to take pictures for this post.

Each kid has two shelves to put their clothes on.  Or, at least they have the space of two shelves. One of them has bins on the floor in place of one shelf. Another has a basket/shelf combo area. As you can see, the shelves are also used for storing other household items, Costco paper goods, stuffed animals (finally, a place for the stuffed animals!), clothes to grow into, etc.

We have carabiners to hold the tzitzit collection. This works well because it’s easy to get the set they want, but, it closes so they don’t end up falling all over the floor. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, they wear these on their clothes – usually their belt loops. Numbers 15:39 says “you shall have the tzitzit that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of Yahweh and do them.”  

We also have a hanging rack for their hanging clothes.

I love this black shelf. My husband got it for me when Borders Books was going out of business. It’s very sturdy and it rolls. We had it in the school room for a long time to hold school supplies. We didn’t need it in there anymore when we added built-in bookshelves. (That’s another blog post for another day.) So, now we’re using it for the baby doll and dress up clothes collection.

And, last, but not least, we have the baby dolls. Lots and lots of well loved baby dolls. 

We have mostly had our family closet in a varying configurations in the garage. Some people have it in their laundry room. Others have made a bedroom into the family closet. If you like the idea, be creative. You'll find a way to do it.

Musings of a MOMYS

I've been a part of the MOMYS (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) email list for many years now. Having a large family isn't easy in this society and it's not popular. Quite often when a MOMYS vents about how tired she is or how overwhelmed she is, all she gets is a reminder that she chose to have a large family and she should deal with it, but, that doesn't make her any less tired or overwhelmed. And, being tired or overwhelmed doesn't mean she loved her family any less or wishes she could change it . It's just a reality of mothering a big family.Sometimes all she needs is a listening ear or a tip on how to handle the day to day life of a large household.  The support I have received form this group over the years has been my lifeline so many times. A new MOMYS cookbook is being published and I was asked to contribute a little something the cookbook. Here is what I wrote:

Children teach us so much. When I had my first child, I began to better understand how incredibly much God loves me. I know He loves me infinitely more than I love my kids. But, to love my own child is a love I can’t express. It must be experienced to be understood.

I’ve been a mommy for a long time - twenty-three years, actually. I’ve been pregnant for 6 years of my life. I’ve nursed babies for 16 years of my life. I’ve homeschooled for 19 years and I have 12 to go. I’ve spent over 100 hours in labor and rejoiced as I brought each child into the world. I’ve kissed boo boos, held sick kids through the night, danced in the rain, searched frantically for a pacifier, laughed, cried, spent time in urgent care, celebrated over 100 birthdays, sniffed newborns, played hide and seek with a little person in plain sight, been thrown up on, pushed kids on swings, taught kids to read, felt like a failure, watched their face light up when they really understand 1s, 10s and 100s, graduated young adults from high school, responded innumerable times to “Mommy, watch me!”, been hugged by chubby toddler arms, wondered if I’m teaching them enough, walked and bounced countless hours trying to make baby happy, rejoiced with a child when they accomplished something new, forgotten to pack diapers in the diaper bag, leaked breastmilk all over my shirt for months on end, enjoyed a newborn cry, endured a newborn cry, delighted in baby laughter, taught kids not to whine, peed with an audience, showered with an audience, tickled tiny knees, played one too many rounds of Candyland, had my lap filled with kids of all ages and sizes, been discouraged, been encouraged, been drained and been rejuvenated, all because I am filled with an inexplicable love for these people who started out doing nothing more than eating, sleeping, crying and pooping and are in the process of growing up - each into a unique creation, each one so different and each one so awesome.

All those experiences and so much more, the good and the bad, have taught me numerous lessons and made me the person I am today. Being a mommy is hard work. It requires a constant giving of yourself. I’ve found that I wished I balanced just a little bit more of taking care of me, mostly because I’m overweight and out of shape…and I wish I’d spent a few more hours scrapbooking. And, I think a little more hubby and me time would have been good. But, that’s about it. I don’t wish I’d spent more time mopping the floor or drilling math facts or diagramming sentences or going shopping or going out with my friends or dusting the furniture or running the kids to endless activities. I do wish I’d spent more time enjoying the moment, because, those moments are fleeting.

I am thankful for all the minutes, hours, days and weeks I’ve had with these children. And, I am thankful for the support and sacrifice of my husband, Jim. He works hard to support us so I can stay home with the kids and we can have the freedom to homeschool. Mostly, I am thankful that God blessed me with the knowledge of Him and has allowed me to share His eternal values with my family, my heritage.

Missi – MOMYS to 7, plus 5 bonus kids

Color Coded Dishes

I’ve been a member of the MOMYS (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) email groups for many years. It has been a lifesaver for me many times. There are several very simple tips I have learned to help out with the everyday chaos of raising a big family.  One of those is color coded dishes. Back before I color coded my dishes, I often had the issue of kids leaving their dishes out on the table or counter, instead of putting them in the dishwasher. And, inevitably, no one knew whose dish it was. Or should I say the dishes belonged to the ever elusive Not Me.

For our dishes, we chose Fiesta ware. Since, this company has been around for a long time, I know that I can get replacement dishes, when necessary. Being a little OCD, I like to know I can get the same dishes, so my stack of dishes doesn’t look mismatched. Breakage is certain to happen, but even with tile floors, it doesn’t happen too often. When we had preschoolers, they used plastic plates. Now everyone has ceramic plates, but I do keep some plastic plates in stock for guests.

For a long time, we used plastic drinking cups – usually Tupperware, because, again, I knew I could replace the cups. But, we are using plastic less and less, so this is our new drinkware. I tried several things to distinguish one glass from another.  I used little stick on drink charms, but they didn’t stay well. Rubberbands were too hard to find in different colors. So, I ordered drink bands from www.drinkbands.com  They work great. We just leave them on the glass and put it in the dishwasher at night, so everyone’s clean glass is ready to go in the morning. The glasses on the left are clean because those kids spent the night at Grammy's and haven't been home all day. The ones on the right are dirty, and I didn't feel like washing them for the picture. Just being real. :)

 With preschoolers, I used a silicone case for the small mouth 8 oz mason jar. These are made for baby bottles, but they fit great on those 8 oz jars. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SRJTXQ/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1  And, they saved the jars from many a fall onto the ceramic tile in our great room.

So, now I know who left their dish on the table so they can take care of it. And, we know whose cup is whose, so we minimize the number of cups used each day.  Just one of the little things that makes my life easier.

Conquering Mt. Washmore

Being a mom of many, I have definitely had my moments (OK, maybe years, not moments) of never being caught up on laundry; or, of having a permanent large pile of clean laundry on my bedroom floor. It never seemed to get folded and put away. We would just rummage through it when we needed something. But, the laundry was always out of control and it drove me nuts!! After much trial and error, I have come up with a solution that has been working well for over 10 years now.

Basically, I wash all the clothes twice a week. Monday and Thursday work best for me.  I don’t have kids wash their own clothes for a few reasons; although, they do help me when I need it. I don’t mind doing the laundry myself. As I do it, I can make sure the clothes are in good condition and pull out any torn or outgrown clothes, etc. I also don’t want to compete for time in the washing machine if others in the house are trying to do their own laundry. And, I don’t want people running tiny loads of laundry when I can fill up the washer.

We have several spots where we collect dirty clothes – one in the garage, where we keep all the younger kids’ clothes, one in the master bedroom and one in the kids’ bathroom upstairs. In the morning, I have the kids round up the dirty clothes and take them to the garage.  I sort them into piles by color. I know many people that don’t separate their colors, but I like to do my best to keep the colors from becoming muddy, hoping to be a good steward of the clothing God has given us. In the picture below, I have 5 piles of regular laundry. Behind those, I have a basket of cold water wash, which I usually only do once a week.

My laundry room isn’t very large and it has 2 doors and cupboards that open onto it, so keeping  anything on the floor in the laundry room doesn’t work well. Since my garage is just outside the laundry room, it’s a good place to sort the clothes. When a load comes out of the dryer, I take it back to the garage where I have an area set up for laundry.  The setup has varied over the years, depending on the space in the garage and on how many kids I am doing laundry for. This is our basic setup now. Each kid has a basket of their own, and I use one basket for my husband and me.

I set the basket of freshly cleaned clothes on the table and start sorting.  The upper shelf is for the older kids. The basket on the far left of that shelf is giveaways. So, when things are outgrown, they go into that basket. (I used to have a whole system for storing outgrown clothes to save them for the next child, but we don’t need that anymore.) My basket is on the left of the table. And, the younger kids’ baskets are under the table. I simply pull a piece of clothing out of basket and put it in the basket of the person who owns that item. If it goes in my basket, I fold it first. The blue basket on the floor in the picture is socks. I throw all socks in there and everyone finds their own. (Although, last week I did attempt sorting socks into each basket again. We’ll see if that lasts.)

Simple as that – as each basket comes from the laundry room, I sort it. I rarely let the baskets of clean clothes pile up. This way, when the kids say “Mom, have you seen my (insert specific item of clothing here)” I can either tell them I remember washing it and it’s in their clean clothes basket. Or, I might tell them it’s in a certain dirty clothes pile. And, of course, there are those times when I don’t know where their missing clothing is. (As a matter of fact, right now, two kids are looking for their rock climbing shirts in the dirty clothes pile.)

To help me sort clean clothes, each child is assigned a certain number of dots. For instance, my oldest daughter gets one dot put on the tag of her clothing. My second daughter gets two dots, and so on. One thing I would change to this system is that I would not do a 1, 2, 3 dot for the boys and a 1,2,3 dot for the girls, basically because, in my case, a boy/girl of similar size ends up with the same number of dots. Usually that’s not a problem, but when we get matching shirts from Sukkot or theater, it’s hard to tell whose is whose. But, we’re too far into the dot system to change it now.

As we get new clothes, we put on the dots before they enter the clothing collection. When clothing gets handed down from one child to the next, we just add a dot. Simple as that. And, it makes sorting laundry so much easier for me!

After the laundry is sorted, each person is in charge of putting away their own laundry. When my children were smaller, and we used the big kid/little kid buddy system, big kids were in charge of putting away their little buddy’s laundry or helping them put it away, depending on the age of the little buddy. But, since my littlest is 6, she is old enough to put away her own laundry. So, everyone does their own. This way, even when clean clothes haven’t been put away in a timely manner, we can still find what we need pretty easily.

In between clothes washing days, I wash towels, sheets and any other miscellaneous stuff that needs to be washed. And, I usually take the weekend off from laundry.