Wednesday, September 10

Is it time yet?

I have bags and bins of clothes to sort through and redistribute for sizes and seasons. (praise the LORD for His provision!) I'm sure this seasonal task will only get more fun as we are blessed with more kiddos, and we have more sizes to sort through.

My quandry - this morning it is a chilly 39 degrees. But the highs for this week are going to continue in the 70's with alternating days of sun and rain. So do I pack up the shorts and sleeveless shirts or hang on for a few more weeks to see if we'll have another warm spell?

How do you decide when to switch over the clothing? Do you switch yourself over at the same time? Also on the topic of clothing, if you have more than one munchkin, how do you do laundry? Do you have separate hampers for the kiddos and wash everything separately or do a big family load and sort later?

12 comments:

Kara said...

I just do full loads of everyones clothes when I wash.

I start sorting through things when I can't see the boys bedroom floor anymore. That would be today. We have also been blessed beyond belief with hand-me-downs, it is awesome! I am packing away most summer stuff, just leaving out the favorite pairs of shorts and t-shirts.

Momto5 RachelJoy Photography said...

when I lived at EB i washed all the kiddos clothes together and Jacob's and mine together (laundry for seven!!!) I also never packed away their winter/summer. It's FL so I just moved all long sleeves and pants to the bottom drawer , etc.... :) as for my personal stuff... its just a rotation in the closet.. hahahha.. cool clothes up front..warm in back...etc....

Tricia said...

I always start chomping at the bit to switch out seasonal clothes too early, so this year I'm going to wait it out a bit. I have access to their jeans and jackets so I figure that should tide us over until I get everything out. As far as laundry goes, I do have a separate hamper for the kids, but only do their dark load separately because I have enough darks from Ryan and I to do a full load. I've recently switched from doing a load a day to doing all laundry on Thursday, which has turned out to work much, much better. I fold it all on our bed and wait until all the loads are done to put it away. I've always dreaded putting laundry away - for some strange reason - so that seems to cut back on that some. =) I'm weird.

The Barkers said...

Um...you live in MI the wackiest place for weather change on earth. :-) Remember when I was there last Oct? It was a wild 90 degrees! My cousins, Andrea and I and the kids...all wanted a nice Apple Cider FAll experience. We were sweating soooo badly! I wuoldn't know what to tell you about change over. Its a hard one.
As for luandry...I plan on Jonas and Ivy sharing a hamper and I sort when its time to do a load. There is a mixture of everyones things usually in one load. :-)
Cute pictures in the previous post! Can't wait to see your house when its done!
Sarah

dan and cheryl forbes said...

two words: INDIAN SUMMER. wait until it is over. Same for the AC. Dad

Anonymous said...

well- i just switch closets from summer wear to winter wear- since i have an extra closet for the boys clothes, i don't need to store them in bins, i just swap. i have drawers also for their shorts and a seperate one for pants, they just stay the same. i do have to find the outgrown clothes for the little one, but those are stored nearby in an empty dresser. i start to do that by the end of september for fall/winter clothes. i wouldn't pack up ALL the summer stuff just yet--indian summer! sweatshirts and jeans work great for outdoors, and short sleeves will get you through oct at least! usually the house is warmer then outside---and kids are generally warmer/ more active.

now, as for the laundry--i used to do seperate kids/adult loads, but that is just to crazy and timeconsuming. now, the boys have thier own hampers, but i do all the laundry together, fold as it comes out of the dryer, put ALL loads on my bed and then sort and put away-- i also like to pick a day and do the laundry then and not just one load a day--then it never seems like you are finished with that--and you need more room to sort.

Rachel said...

I'm still getting used to the southern climate:). Last year, it was 70 degrees in the middle of December. I remember this because I just HAD to mark it on my calender. All that to say, I try to keep the warm weather clothes close at hand just in case. Winter is very brief down here compared to the loooong months of cold weather in VT.

As far as laundry goes, I do Marcus' laundry separately because I use a baby detergent for his things. I sort as I do the laundry instead of sorting before hand. It's what works for me right now. We'll see if I do something else as our family grows.

Shelldell said...

I do laundry everyday requardless of size and people. We have an acre to manage and so we may wear at least two outfits a day.
I love previous own clothing because often times it's already been shrunked so I don't need to worry about that.

Anonymous said...

One to two loads a day, sorted by water temp. or color, works best for us. I need the steadiness of only one to two loads per day. It seems that just load is easy to get done while the kids are finishing lunch or I'm on the phone. It's not the washing mounds of laundry that's hard; it's the putting away! (Too many nights of tumbling into bed, but wait, there's laundry there!) It helps keep life even so if something bad happens on "laundry day" we are not sunk. I've tried different systems and read different things. We live in a small house for our family size and this keeps clothes in the drawers without piles lurking and disrupting. It also keeps the number of articles per load more even--the load of six jeans is easy, the load of 30 1T clothes is not.

Our home has a laundry shoot--no hampers. It's fun so even the one-year-old runs to throw things down. The kids help put away. Like I said, it works for us. Everyone finds what flows well for them.
Jo

Rosemary said...

Remember last fall? We had 'summer like' weather into October.
Our grandkids have all their limited supply of clothes (that sort of fit) out at all times. Sometimes they wear shorts & tees in the house in the middle of the winter when they are doing chores. In the summer, they are chilly sitting around the campfire in the evening or playing hide & seek after dark and need their sweatshirts & sweatpants.
Grandkid #3 is pretty talented in many ways .. especially at getting his clothes REALLY dirty, so they each have a separate dirty clothes tote or bag and wash their loads separately at their laundry mat or at grandma's house.

Katie said...

I already switched the boys' clothes. The shorts are just in a bin in their closet, and I can easily pull some out if they're needed. I haven't switched Chris' and my clothes yet.

I have always done the boys clothes separate from ours, generally. Simon has sensitive skin, so has to have different laundry soap/softener; and just in the last month or so I started doing even his and Luke's clothes separately. I find that when I do a whole load of the boys' clothes, or a whole load of our darks or whites, it's much easier to fold and put away. There aren't a million little piles when you're folding mainly the same things. My laundry system changes every once in a while, but this is what I'm doing right now.

Stephens said...

Well, I think you should just keep the summer stuff out so you can pack it in your suitcase and come out to sunny SoCal where we typically have 90 degree days. :-)

I seriously would not put all summer stuff away yet. Sarah is right about last year. Going to a pumpkin patch/apple cider place in scorching heat was a bit weird. I usually kept short-sleeved shirts out for quite a while during Fall. They can go with pants and a jacket or sweater. For my clothes, I do the rotate in my closet thing. The folded ones stay in the same drawers all year long.

We just have a laundry day each week. It works fine for us. It may take a couple of days though to get through it all because of other things I am doing. :-) We each have a basket in our rooms. I bring them all around the recliner, pull out clothes, and start throwing them into sorted piles on the floor. I just go to the next one as I switch loads throughout the day.

I did use Dreft on the girls clothes when they were babies, and only washed the baby clothes together.