Just a typical Saturday

And why is it typical? Because I've started more than one project and left a trail of chaos in my wake. In my defense, it's that time of year when I look at the clothes my children have been wearing and realize that they have all grown and most of their clothes no longer fit. And if they do fit, they are fairly disreputable looking. So that means it's time to do the dreaded task of sorting through clothes.

The fact that the laundry hasn't really been caught up for a while just adds to the chaos. But this morning, I had enough done that I felt I could make a start. K.'s are pretty much all done. It had been a loooong time since I had really had to go through his clothes since he has been the same size for quite a while. And then we would receive hand-me-downs from friends and the clothes we already had did that weird multiply-thing and as a result, he had so many clothes they didn't all fit in his dresser and I discovered that many of them didn't fit. Hooray! I was able to give away all the 3T and 4T clothes that he has been wearing and now he only has size 5's in his dresser.

That job was pretty straight forward. K.'s the youngest boy, so if something doesn't fit, I give it away. But then I decided to do TM and D.'s clothes as well. Their dressers needed straightening as well. For many years, both boys wore pretty much the same size (not exact, but close) and so they shared all their clothes. But for the last several months, this has no longer been possible and they now have certain clothes for each of them. I had never really re-done the dressers to reflect this change. Plus, they are also now having many more opinions about what they like to wear (imagine!) and so there were quite a few clothes lurking in their dressers which never saw the light of day.

It's easy to decide what stays in the dressers, but with middle children, the out-grown clothes become much more complicated. There are a couple of choices. I can either decide to save it, hoping that the next one in line will like the item and want to wear it or I can give it away, knowing that the next child will turn up his nose at it or it will have gone so far out of style in the interim that all the next child can do is laugh.

Putting away the clothes I'm saving is a royal pain. It involves spending time in the less-than-pleasant basement and finding the correct box and shoving (literally sometimes) the clothes into them. Or it means I have to scrounge some boxes first because I don't have that size currently in storage. I don't want to have to do this more than once, and I know there are still more clothes coming through the laundry which I have to sort through, so I now have a large basket in my room piled with clothes that at some point will need to be stored.

I should probably have spent some time with H.'s clothes today as well, but I just didn't have it in me. (She has changed size since we came home and things that fit in China, are no longer fitting quite so well.)  Another day.

All this clothes sorting and storing is not one of my favorite parenting tasks. And it's certainly not any more interesting to actually do than to read about. I'm curious how other people handle it... or is it just one of those things that has to be done and there's not really an easy way to do it.

I did actually finish a couple things, though. I taught a piano lesson, got everyone's church clothes laid out and ironed, made my outline for the class I'm teaching tomorrow on how to use worship notebooks, and... I guess that's it, I can't think of anything else.

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