[starsandstripes]

I hang out here sometimes.....ok mostly I lurk. I'm Nicole, mom of 8 and expecting #9, only no one knows yet, so shhhhhh. We have 4 girls and 4 boys, so this one is a tie breaker We are also currently in the process of selling our 5br home because we just need more space! However, the market is still pretty bad here, and let's face it...selling a home with 8 kids. gahhhhhhhhhh!!!! I don't know if this sucker will ever sell! So, I was hoping you guys could help with organization because we may have to make do for a while.

First up....dressers??? Oh.MY.GOSH! Maybe I'm just a total clothing addict and maybe I buy WAY too many clothes for my kids, but we have clothes EVERYWHERE!! Each child has their own dresser, but they are always breaking the drawers, clothes are always thrown out all over the floor. If I don't check the upstairs at least once a day, it looks like WWII with the clothes all over the place! So do you cut way back on clothing, throw more away (surely not...I keep almost everything because we pass them down). Do you hang a lot of the kids' clothes up...what in the world? Also, how do you room the kids? Right now we have 2 kids per room and we have two dressers per room. We have one large bonus room so we COULD put all the dressers in one room (like one big closet) and put the boys all in one room (they are the youngest)....but I don't know. I was hoping I could get some inspiration from you ladies Do you have cubbies?

What are your biggest struggles organization wise?

[#5in2005]

Welcome here and congrats on your pregnancy.

I'm not the one to tell you about organization, I "only" have 5 so I'm not sure if what works for me would work for you.

[KrazE]

I think I recall it being FW who is pretty organized with her household (my brain isn't always working) - someone has a 'community closet' maybe it is?

Honestly if they are breaking the dressers, then turn the room you mentioned into a great big closet for all the kids & get all the clothes completely out of the bedrooms.

[MIL2lissy8]

...or turn the big room into a dormitory set up for the boys and use a smaller room for the clothes. i am a saver/passer-downer type of gal, so i have boxes of clothes. i organize by size range and then label the box. that being said, lissa mostly buys new for her boys.

its the toybox that drives me crazy!!!

[starsandstripes]

That's the problem with us I think. I buy all new things, so the old things stick around forever because I'm also a pack rat and think SOME day we'll use them or find someone who needs them. I really have to get better at recycling to either get rid of some of their clothes or pass them down to the smaller ones. Hubby says I should invite some friends to go shopping in the attic The dressers are always an issue in our house. With the older kids, it's not an issue at all....but with our 4, 6 and believe it or not EIGHT year olds it is an issue. (Ok I say that, but honestly, my 14 and 15 year olds will throw clothes on the floor too!....do yours not do this?) Of course, they have so many clothes, that they get crammed into the dressers and that doesn't help either. We do go through them about once a month, but it seems like every month it's the same way. Maybe they need bigger dressers. I don't like the idea of putting all the boys together in one room, although the one room is HUGE....I just like the idea of them only sharing with one other sibling, but we may have to try that and see if it works for a while. With the new baby coming, someone is going to be 3 to a room once the baby is out of our room IF we don't sell our house so that we can get into something bigger. One thing is for sure, we've got to get this worked out this year because the clothing thing drives me crazy With everything else, I think we tend to be a bit more organized....

Ok and then there is the toy closet.....lol! We have a walk in, large closet underneath our stairs that is designated for toys. They take some upstairs, but for the most part, they are all in the downstairs closet so that they play with them all right there and they can be cleaned up when they are finished This is one area that I do clean out like once every other week because they will end up all OVER the place if I don't I have that pretty organized. Our 4 youngest are boys, so there's a lego box, a book box, a block box, a puzzle box, and then the stand up toys and music toys are all lined up against the wall and the ride on toys are on the other wall....etc. About once every other week, I"ll go upstairs and collect all the toys and bring them back down too so that the upstairs doesn't have toys thrown everywhere. I don't fuss about them taking them up there to play with them, we just bring them back down so that the upstairs stays tidy. (besides the clothes thing) LOL!

What do you guys do with shoes? We have a shoe closet too! LOL

[Kristina]

I did have your same problem with the clothes, so I started a community closet right off of the laundry room, and while it doens't stop them from changing and getting a lot of clothes out it limits the mess to only one room. I find that if I don't go down there and pick it up daily (towels and my 10 year old son's dirty clothes)clean clothes end up back in the dirty laundry. I did have #1-#6 clothes all in there (I had the two youngest boys clothes in their room) but last week we did room changes so now the older two girls have their own rooms with their clothes in them. And I moved the two youngest boys clothes down into the family closet.
Toys I have divided into girls and boys, the 3 younger girls have a playroom that is right before their bedroom we call that the barbie room so in essence they have 2 rooms for the 3 of them. Now the boys toys I am still setting up because we just moved everything son #1 has his own room with his "toys" in there, (legos, kinex, science stuff) and his playstation. The two lil boys have a big room that I am in the process of tearing the wall paper off of so it is a mess. but the plan is for most of their toys to go in there with the over flow right outside their room where the "library" is.
Shoes are each in their own rooms in a basket with winter boots and sports shoes in the coat closet.
Congrats on #9

[Farmers-wife]

Congrats on #9. I am pg with#9. We have 4/4 and this tie breaker goes to the girls.

You have too much stuff and not enough discipline. Get rid of half, increase the discipline by 50%. It doesn't matter where you put the stuff, it will be everywhere if there is no discipline.

Now, after saying that, I have to go work on some discipline of my own.

[~mommy~]

Hello, welcome and congratulations on your pregnancy.
We only have 6dc, but I will share my "systems" and maybe you can use something.
For clothes:
dd1- I hang her shirts, then she has a 3 drawer dresser where I put
top- all underclothes (socks, underwear, camisoles, tank tops etc) swimwear
middle- sleepwear
bottom- pants, shorts etc.
ds1- has a 4 drawer dresser so his is as follows
top- socks, underwear, swimwear
2nd- pjs
3rd- shirts
4th- pants or shorts depending on the season.
ds2&3 share a 6 drawer dresser so they each get 3 drawers.
top- socks, underwear, pjs, swimwear
2- shirts
3- pants or shorts depending on season
dd2&3 each have matching 5 drawer dressers they are
1- socks, swimwear
2- pjs
3- outfits
4- shirts
5- pants or shorts depending on season.
For off season clothing I store it in plastic (Rubbermaid - Sterilite ) containers. Since it's just til next season, I store it all together.
I put shirts and pants in their drawers bookshelf style instead of on top of each other. You do this by folding the shirts in half again, so the middle is sticking up. This way the dc can look and see all the shirts at once and it avoids the need to pull them all out. They can see and pull out only the one they want.I donate the clothes that are outgrown.
For toys:
My dh just built some giant wooden toy boxes in the basement. They have doors that will lock. That way they will only have access to a limited amount at a time. We also go through them every couple of months and get rid of the ones that are broken or unused. I try very hard to keep the toys in the basement, but I'm outnumbered.
For shoes:
Dh just built a shoe holder similar to the ones they have at Mcdonalds. Now if only the dc would actually put their shoes there, we'd be in business.
For coats:
Each person has a hook right by the door and we have a front hall closet for overflow/company. This area has gotten away from me. I need to fix it or dh is going to and I don't want any more hooks.

[Repti.Mom]

I was going to say the same thing as FW I have 6, going on 7, and they are split among 3 bedrooms. Let me start out by saying we have NO storage at all besides in the bedrooms, the basement is the playroom, and we have no garage. The only other storage we have is an outdoor hallway which is for outdoor things.

In the 'big' boys room they have 2 dressers (technically one is built into the bed) and 1/2 of a closet. Noah gets the shelf, because Christmas totes are on the bottom half. The girls have 3 dressers, and one drawer that is functional below Jayde's bed. They also have a closet which has a leeeetle bit of clothing for the next size for the smaller kids. I don't keep much, maybe 5 sets of clothing for each, so a grocery bag full.
Sebastian has his own room for now, and has 1 dresser, of which he uses 3 drawers, and the drawers under the twin captains bed that is in there has bedding in it for crib/toddler beds.

I am VERY anti clutter. If something doesn't have a place or a need it goes out on the corner by our house for free on CL, unless it has real value then I might try to sell it. If you stay home, and keep up on laundry like you're supposed to, they only really need 5-7 sets of clothing per child per season. That doesn't take up much room at all.

[Momtothe6thpower]

First of all, I want your house! LOL! It sounds perfect for my 6.

I just did a clothing overhaul last month. I was sick and tired of accommodating clothes. It was really hard for me at first because I too like to keep everything 'just in case' but it really isn't realistic thinking when you already have soooo much, kwim.

I went through everything one person at a time, kept (in the house) only what was nice and favorable by the person wearing it, for hand-me-downs I allowed myself one (kitchen sized, no 30 gals here) trash bag for each size to be put in storage and everything else was either thrown out or donated. We ended up donating 13 bags of clothes! It's so liberating having it out of the house and laundry isn't as crazy anymore because the over flow that usually landed on the floor doesn't get dumped back in the laundry basket.

We have a 'family closet' off the laundry room too. Right now it's pretty empty because as I was purging I hung up most of the kids stuff in their bedrooms. (I have two boys in one room and three girls in another. The baby is still in my room.) The two boys share a closet and a dresser. The two older girls share their closet and a dresser and the two younger girls each have a small dresser of there own. I use those cubby things that hold the fabric cubes for socks and undies. Just give each kid their own color cube. (I don't hate socks anymore, lol!)

I purged alot of shoes too. I'm planning on getting another cubby thing for the shoe closet. Just like the socks, they can keep their shoes in their own cube. Hopefully, it will work.

Right now, my biggest organization problem is the kids backpacks and junk for school. Everyday, after school, my bench by the doorway becomes a huge pile of coats, backpacks, binder, hats, etc. I CANNOT stand it. I saw another mom on this board (Shari I believe) take old lockers and decorate them to be used for all their school stuff. I'm on the lookout for the perfect set of lockers now.

[starsandstripes]

Originally Posted by Farmers-wife

Congrats on #9. I am pg with#9. We have 4/4 and this tie breaker goes to the girls.

You have too much stuff and not enough discipline. Get rid of half, increase the discipline by 50%. It doesn't matter where you put the stuff, it will be everywhere if there is no discipline.

Now, after saying that, I have to go work on some discipline of my own.

haha, thank you! I told my husband last night that we were going to go through everything and get rid of clothing by about 50% and he said "I've been telling you for WAY too long we have too much stuff" LOL>

[starsandstripes]

Thank you all so much! I've come to the realization that we have way too many clothes. WAY WAY too many. They just got 5-7 new outfits before we went on vacation in January alone....that wasn't even counting the ALREADY overflowing dressers! Ok, mom is on a mission....I'm going to be a donating queen next week. I'm not sure that 5-7 outfits total will work for us, because it seems like they need to have at least that many "go out" outfits because we do a lot as a family (movies, bowling, mall dates etc), and then they need a few "play" outfits for when they are playing outside...and then of course a few pairs of pajamas, and then a few "dresses" for church.....but the dresses and the decent stuff for going out can all be hung in the closet. The rest is going to good will or the drawers...and I LOVE The "file" idea versus the one on top of the other. I think that will most definitely help the little guys. Thank you for your input!

Momtothe6, we have a shoe closet that is right by the front door. I believe it was originally supposed to be a linen closet because there's also a bathroom right there. However, it's only a .5 bath, so we don't need or use linens there. It has shelves in it, so we put shoes on the floor and bottom 2 shelves. Each child has their OWN little tupperware container where they have their OWN shoes. They all have 5-6 pairs of shoes (that I need to go through). We live in the south so we have flip flops, dress flats and tennis shoes as staples. The 3rd row from the bottom shelf 3 tupperware containers full of socks. We can get better organized with the socks...that part is horrendous! Then on the top shelves and hanging up is where ALL of their school stuff goes. We seldom need jackets here, but their bookbags, binders, and books ALL go on the shelves when they are finished doing their homework. Actually, we hang the bookbags on hangers and they get hung in the closet. Clutter drives me crazy too...which is one of the reasons why I've got to get this clothing thing worked through. I'm a stressed mess!