10 March 2008

A Very Good Feeling

I used to have many disorganised plastic bags of kids' clothes stored untidily all over the place. Friends and family have been wonderful and generous (thank you very much, those of you who are reading!) and they have helped us out so very much by giving us great clothes that their kids no longer need. We have saved a large amount of money because of your generosity, and we appreciate it so much!

However the process of clothes acquisition fell down when I gratefully accepted these clothes and FAILED TO SORT THEM OUT.

Time and time again I thanked my wonderful benefactors and shoved the bags wherever they would fit, in the assumption that I'd sort them out "Someday Soon". But of course "Someday Soon" never comes and the sorting-out never happens. Not once have I been sitting around thinking, "You know what I'd love to do a bit of right now? I'd just love to sort and fold some bags of kids' clothes!"

So I've never really known what is in each bag. When Sonny Ma-Jiminy or Chubbity Bubbity have outgrown their current size or when the seasons have changed, I've had to go on a big search to find what I'm after.

This won't happen any more. After three years, I have finally come up with my favourite solution to keeping and storing babies' and kids' clothes. Here it is.
Archive boxes, neatly labelled and easily accessed. Clothes nice and dry before storage and three or four bars of nice-smelling soap in each box. I am tremendously proud of myself.

I tossed up whether or not to use "Space Bags" instead. The two benefits would be (1) much less space used in storage, and (2) clothes would stay that little bit fresher if they were completely dry when stored. The two problems with Space Bags would be (1) they are much more expensive, and (2) I wouldn't be able to easily crack one open to grab a jumper in summer or an item of a different size when friends' kids came over and needed something. Since then, I've discovered more problems with Space Bags that I hadn't thought of.

I decided that I could easily live without those two benefits, and the two drawbacks would drive me nuts. So I went with archive boxes.

Look at them. Aren't they neat?

2 comments:

sister said...

The boxes are great! What a lot of effort. Again, guilt, because I'm one of the people sending you clothes. But my kids have a shopoholic grandma and there's no one else on the planet who wants secondhand stuf. Besides you. So yay for boxes.

Givinya De Elba said...

No no, I've tried so hard to make sure that my wonderful clothing benefactors did not feel bad - I really need you and other CBs to understand that it was MY OWN LAZINESS in not sorting through things immediately that put me in the position in the first place. NOT your generosity! Your generosity is much appreciated! So if you have anything in Size 3 or bigger in the future, send it my way. I think there's also room in those boxes for Size 2 girls. Now that I have a System, I can accept anything! Yay for you! Yay for my CBs! Yay for Archive Boxes!!!!!!