Sunday, January 22, 2012

The fruits of my labor

Months and months ago, I began the process of separating all of the girls' clothes and clothing items, such as socks and underwear. I should backtrack here for a moment. When we first moved into our house, the girls shared a bedroom and a closet. The girls moved into their own bedrooms a long time ago but still shared a closet and a small bureau.

The girls requested separate closets and even though it's more work for me, I really can't blame them for wanting non-shared items seeing as almost everything in their life is shared. I used fabric markers (purple for Allie, red for Anna and pink for Emily) to label most of their clothes, including socks (the bottoms) and underwear. That process took forever and I didn't even label their summer clothes.

So here's a before picture of the closet in Allie's room taken back in the summer:

jan21a

Here is Allie's closet now:

jan21b

In order to free up space in the disaster area of a playroom, we are (very neatly) storing games and puzzles on the lower shelf.

Anna's closet:

jan21c

Em's:

jan21d

Over the past few weekends, I was able to completely clean all three bedrooms. This may not seem like a big deal but those rooms were messy. All of the baskets had been pulled out of Allie's closet and were scattered about the room. I also had piles of clothes to give away and bags and boxes of clothes that had been gifted or handed down to us that needed to be sorted through and organized.

Three children who are the same size at the same time can be expensive. Especially when those three children are girls and stores are full of temptations. In all seriousness, I have tried to watch the clothing purchases because as you can see, the girls have plenty. Up until this afternoon, 2012 had been purchase-free. I found water-proof snow boots on sale for $5.38 at Target for Emily.

It appears that I missed Target's big shoe sale but I did find two pairs of OshKosh shoes in a much bigger size marked down to $5.38 per pair so I snatched those up. Anna's feet are approximately a size and a half smaller than Allie's and Em's. We suspect that this is related to her having spina bifida, which has caused the muscles in her feet to not develop as they should. She has been able to wear shoes and boots after Em and/or Allie grow out of them. I did stop buying ahead for clothes but I can't resist for shoes.

8 comments:

Breenah said...

You did pretty good! Three weeks with no purchases. I don't think I even went a day! Haha!

Wendy said...

They look great! I love the pink of Allie's room- Lilly wants her own pink room someday. If you're on the hunt for shoes on sale, Payless has BOGO right now :)
If you buy through Ebates (I can give you a link if you're not already a member) you can get something like 3% back on any online purchase, too!

Steph said...

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My blog is http://www.thecribdiaries.wordpress.com. I love your work!

Esther and Brian said...

love clothes! perhaps it's a good thing that i have two boys and not two girls! it takes longer to find cute clothes for boys, because i do not like the standard "football", "baseball" look but for girls- i would be in trouble!
what size shoes do the kiddos wear? still tiny? :)
ps: not making fun of their sizes, just so you know. i am laughing with you since my twins are teenie compared to the other kids, too.

Jennifer said...

You did an AMAZING job!!! I loved the "sneak peak" of the girls' rooms. The closets look great :)

Sarah said...

Thanks, everyone! Esther - I know what you mean. their feet are TINY for an almost 5 year old. Allie and Em are wearing an 8 and Anna is wearing a 7 (with some growing room.)

Esther and Brian said...

that is tiny, sarah!!! but hey, who cares? my boys are 41 months old and are just 26lb...38inches though..3T length needed in pants but in shorts, 12-18/24 month is just fine! shoes are 8.5 and 9.5..like i said, they are the teeniest in their prek-3 class! and the girls? even taller than the boys....

Esther said...

It's nice to see a girl's closet not overwhelmed with pink. You probably have every color represented in there.
I thought my daughter's feet were small! She is 3 and wears a size 5, but she has orthotics so she needs a size 7 to fit over them. Size 7 for an almost 5 year old *is* small. But you have more options because many cute shoes only come in sizes up to 13.