Saturday, October 28, 2006

Help your kids keep track of their winter gear

It's that time of year again. Time to keep track of dozens of cold weather accessories. It seems like it takes forever to get to the car because you have to factor in all the mitten search time. Rather than continue to waste time hunting, I opted for this easy solution.

We don't have a mud room I our house, so I'm limited on space to hold things like shoes backpacks and winter accessories. I converted the lower half of our coat closet into our 'mini mudroom'. Along one side and across the back of the closet I added large hooks to the walls for backpacks and kid coats. On the other side, I added this 3-drawer plastic organizer for all their winter gear.

When the kids come in from school, they unload all their gear in the closet and dump their hats, scarves and gloves into the drawers. The drawers are clear so it's easy for even my youngest daughter to figure out where her things belong.

We used this inexpensive system all last winter and it worked great. As an added bonus, when Spring finally did come around, I simply moved the drawers to the basement. A few weeks ago when the weather started turning again, I pulled it back out…all the hats, gloves, and scarves were inside and ready to go. It's simple, inexpensive, and totally kid-friendly. Just thought I'd pass it on.

Remember, you can download these handy labels and many other files on my website: www.meckmom.com.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Love it! We don't have a mudroom here, either. Unfortunately, we don't even have a coat closet, but I'm sure I can adapt this to work for us. Maybe I could steal part of the linen closet ... hmmm.