Well our summer guest post series is coming to an end. Doesn’t mean I won’t still be accepting guests around here, just probably not on a weekly basis.  Today we’ve got Beth visiting and while she doesn’t have a public blog she is an Org Junkie reader and wanted to share the method she uses for organizing her boys clothes.   I can’t believe I’ve never thought to do this.  Anytime we can empower our kids to manage a task on their own is a very smart thing.  Welcome Beth!

Mornings have a reputation for being a bit chaotic, but before my oldest son started kindergarten, it wasn’t disastrous if we couldn’t find a matching pair of socks or if there were lots of jeans in the boys’ drawers but no shirts.  We just took the time to find whatever was lacking.  Once school became a part of our lives, each minute in the morning was much more precious. Also, my boys were in charge of putting their laundry away and their drawers were prime examples of organization-gone-wrong.  Very wrong.

After some experimenting, I came up with the following solution:

I had GnomeClothes from Etsy make me several sets of mesh bags in three different colors (she makes produce bags; I gave her my dimensions and requirements, and she made me some wonderful bags!)

Those colors matched the laundry tubs my sons were already using.

After doing laundry, I assemble several sets of pants, shirts, socks, and underwear and slide each set into a bag.

The boys are in charge of putting away their laundry bags and any leftover laundry (usually pajamas and extra socks and such).

They find it is much easier and faster to put away the bags (which means they’re more willing to do it!) and they always have a complete set of clothes to wear in the mornings (and the outfits match too!).

For church clothes, I tied a purple ribbon to the bag; the boys know not to use that bag until Sunday morning.

It does take a little time up-front for me, but it pays off every morning we have a little less chaos!

My system travels pretty well too – when we drive to visit my parents, I simply calculate the number of days we’ll be gone, throw that number of bags and a pair of PJs for each boy into one big tub and they’re packed!

My husband and I have three boys, 7, 5, and 2. (my middle boy, the one in the pictures, just started kindergarten today! And yup, used his little blue bag to get dressed). I’m a speech and language therapist by training, but teach early childhood music and movement classes these days. I’m NOT naturally organized, and frequently feel like Sisyphus when trying to keep the house in livable shape – and that was true even before we added three boys to the mix!

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