Works For Me Wednesday

One question I get a lot is how we fit 3 kids into one small(ish) bedroom. This question pops up especially when people see that we do not have a separate toy room or more than one or two toys in our family room. To that end I am going to run a series on the things we do in order to keep 3 kids in one room with minimal (or at least organized) chaos.

When Juli J moved in it motivated us to do some things we had already been wanting to do. Our bedroom seems like a waste of space to me. We use it as a bedroom, office, and workout room, but the closet seemed to be a gathering place for anything we did not have a place for--and that created a mess. Bins on the floor, unpacked boxes, wasted space...yuck. So we decided to move all the clothes into our closet. 

We Started with 4 dressers, 2 on each side. On one side, we hang the little kids' clothes above the tall dresser, and my clothes above the low dresser. On top of the low dresser, hidden by my clothes, is an extra comforter and Juli's spring pajamas.  The youngest 2 share a dresser, and Mckenna has her own. Mckenna's clothes hang at the back of the closet because she always gets her own clothes each morning--the little ones don't need to be able to reach their hanging clothes as they are mainly dressy clothes.

Dan is a maximizer of space. He has 3 crates stacked on top of his dresser--one for jeans, one for shorts, and one for "other," like batteries. He also has a desk organizer on his dresser. It's kind of hidden by his clothes, but he does not need to access it very often. 

My dresser has a shoe rack on it. There is a small space between my dresser and the wall where we toss boots we hardly use.

There is a low flat bin under Mckenna's dresser with gloves and hats and scarves. 

On the shelves above the clothes, where you may see mess, I see efficiency. I am not into doing a great job folding things like underwear, socks, and sheets. They are going to get used soon, and they are not going to be seen. So why waste time really folding them. I semi-fold them, and throw them up top. I use the stepstool to get them down, and the kids use it to sit on to get dressed.

We hung a full length mirror on the back of the closet door, and call it our "fitting room," which is all it took to get Mckenna super excited.

A major bonus is I don't have to sort each person's clothes as I fold them. I fold a load, take it in the closet, and put it all away at once. Or, I fold on the floor of my room and each kid puts away their own clothes.

It Works for Me!