Gifting and regifting...

I know there are other venues for this, but...

As I have frequently alluded, I am in the midst of serious decluttering of our home and its 12 years, six moves, and eight children's worth of STUFF.  I, the queen of organization and preparedness (snort, gag, cough... I'm okay now), am bit by bit working my way through all those sweet little children's clothes, and while there are pangs of sentimentality during this process, my goal is the following:  to have only one box of clothes stored for each child, containing only what that child will wear in the next year.   Sounds a lot better than my current towers of rubbermaid bins, clearly marked with NB, 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, and so on, up through size 12, in pink for the girls' clothes and blue for the boys'.

Today I have begun with my girl baby clothes.  (Ack, why start there, those are the HARDEST to give up!)  Reason being, I have two sisters both expecting girls in the next 2-4 months, and I would be a greedy big sister if I didn't pass them along, seeing how my 10mo little girl has finally outgrown her 3-6 month clothes.  She's a little bug, for sure, which makes it all the harder to see those cute little newborn outfits go, since she's only my second baby to actually be able to WEAR that size for more than a week.

Am I getting to the point, yet?  sigh.  I am up to the 18 month size girls clothes this afternoon, and am trying to decide if my bugaboo will be able to wear them within the next year.  Somehow I doubt it, since her 2 1/2 year old-- and just as petite-- sister only just grew out of them, for reasons of height, not girth.  

I can't bring myself to toss these in a black bag with the rest of the stuff I never care if I see again.  So here I ask, is there some sweet little fairy out there who would wear an 18mo size either this summer or winter who would benefit from a box of these clothes?  I'd prefer to pass them to another mom taking a leap of faith who can truly appreciate the gifting of pass-around clothing, and maybe in a year I'll see them again, if they aren't worn out first. ;)

Takers?  

Oh, and ps, I'll be continuing this treatment for baby boy clothes too.  My baby boy is 4 1/2, so there's going to be a lot there.  It's about time someone else used what otherwise would continue to sit, very organized-like, in my neatly labeled Rubbermaid boxes.  Somehow it just doesn't seem right anymore.  I mean, do I believe the Lord will provide, or don't I??

Color my world "Organized!"

I have assigned each of my children a color; anytime they all have the same of something, I try to get it in their colors. My children's "colors" are, from the oldest to the youngest:

1- (B) blue
2- (G) purple
3- (B) red
4- (B) green
5- (G) pink
6- (B) orange
7- (G) yellow
8- (G) light blue

In answer to the obvious question, 'what do you do when you run out of colors?' you get creative. By that time you probably don't have exactly the same thing for every child anyway because they are different ages/stages. But it does help with a lot of things, like bath towels, for example. I bought them each one good bath towel and washcloth in that color, and we don't have extra towels getting dirtied. These get laundered once in a while, as they don't bathe every day, and when they do, the towel is (supposedly) used on a clean body, so they don't need to be laundered that often. Everyone knows who left his towel on the bed, or on the floor, so there's no argument there.

Toothbrushes are another example. When we go to the dentist.... well, they just can't find that many different colored toothbrushes in their supply. But when I buy them in betweendental visits, I look for the two-packs for 99 cents and stock up on as many of all the colors as I can so I have a new set when it's time. I refuse to pay more than a dollar for one child's toothbrush!

I have used this system for labeling snack bags and water bottles on trips, so that even pre-reading children know whose is whose. It's kind of funny, but our last several children have learned the colors by the siblings' names before the color name.

Child points to a green block, and says "Joel!" I point to a red block, and the child says "Marc!"

And yes, they do shortly learn the actual names of the colors. :)

For Brighter Smiles-- Including Mom's!! :D

I don't have anything earthshaking on this topic, really. I used to have the nice little toothbrush holders with the four holes in the top. They didn't last long. First of all, how many can I put on one little countertop? Secondly, they are one more thing to clean, which I do NOT need, and a place for germs to grow. Thirdly, how often do the toothbrushes actually get put away and worse, do they even fit?!

I get the cheapest toothbrushes I can find in each child's color*, you know, the plain Jane handles-- like we used to have growing up! But the dentist office stocks the ones with Shrek, Dora, all the characters my kids really don't know because they don't watch contemporary tv and movies. And inevitably, they are the same ones with the thick handles that do not fit in organizers! Soooo following the example of a dear friend and mom to six, I have made it very simple.

In each of our two bathrooms, there is a small wide mouth glass jar on the countertop, and the kids who use that bathroom toss their toothbrushes in there at night. My current jars happen to be from natural peanut butter, but wide mouth canning pints are also fine, and in fact perhaps more sturdy. I keep one tube of toothpaste for each bathroom for the kids too. I am using Tom's natural strawberry toothpaste for them, and it fits in the jar too. Of course they each get one of those little samples from the dentist twice a year, and I let them use them as long as 1)they last, 2)no one is arguing over using each other's toothpaste, and 3)they are not in my way or a mess, whichever comes first. Then I pitch them, whether they are gone or not, because it is just not worth it!, and we go back to the community toothpaste tube. I know some might tell me it's not "clean" to keep toothbrushes together like that, but tell me, are they getting any of each other's germs that they don't get anyway? And it's cleaner than finding them on the floor all the time, near (or in) the toilet, etc.

Mom and Dad's toothbrushes/paste are kept in the medicine cabinet, by the way.


*see post on color-coding children