We have been so blessed with hand-me-downs and generous birthday gifts that Steve and I rarely buy clothes for the girls. We may occasionally purchase a few items for each new season or to replace a well-worn favorite or to accommodate an unexpected growth spurt. But even with the little we actually buy, somehow, those girls have a ton of clothes. It is a blessing and a curse at the same time.
I've begun to suspect that in all the laundry, I'm actually washing CLEAN clothes along with the dirty. Saturday Maya decided to "help" mom out and bring down every one's dirty laundry. She took not only the items from the laundry baskets but also all the items lying on the closet floors. What she brought down amounted to the largest pile of laundry I've ever seen and I've been doing laundry all day, every day, since.
Now I started to notice some suspicious items show up while sorting these for the wash: folded clothes.
Uh-huh, just as I thought.
Needless to say, I've had a lot of time to think about our consumer society. All the excess and accumulation only means more to manage, organize, sort, wash, dry, fold and put away.
So I've devised a plan. Well, actually, Flylady made the plan; I'm just going to be brave enough to adopt it in our house. I've made a list of the essentials and I'm packing up all the rest to see how we get along with living on less. Here are my lists for the girls (all bets are off with the boy who wore 6 sets of clothes yesterday, not counting the swim trunks):
Spring/Summer
7 pairs of socks and underwear
1 pair of jeans
1 yoga pants/sweatpants
6 pair of shorts
6 everyday shirts
2 nice outfits for church/going out
1 nice “long sleeve option”
4 summer pjs
2 bathing suits/cover up
1 hooded/zip sweatshirt
1 rain/windbreaker
1 pair of sandals
1 pair of flip flops
1 tennis/hiking shoes
Fall/Winter
7 pairs of socks and underwear
5 pair jeans
2 yoga pants/sweat pants
6 everyday shirts
2 nice outfits for church/going out
1 “long sleeved option”
4 warm pjs
1 winter coat/hat/scarf/gloves
1 pair winter boots
1 pair tennis/hiking shoes
1 pair nice shoes for church/going out
Now I will admit that I've allowed for a few exceptions for some of the favorites (and for underwear). But I scaled down the wardrobes so that they are very close to this list and their closets are no longer overflowing onto the floor and filtering out of the room.
It does look a little sparse; we're so used to looking at closets stuffed to the limits of all expectations. So I have cheated and built in a safety feature in case we chicken out: I boxed up the extras and stored them in the basement.
To further simplify the laundry, tomorrow I'm going to Wal-Mart and buying them each two towels in their own color. One to use and one to wash. They each have a hook in the bathroom where they can hang their towel. All the others—which end up being those huge beach towels—are going up on the higher shelves and we’ll wait to use those for the pool. No more using 3 towels a piece after a bath.
3 comments:
What happens when you are totally sick of wearing the same 6 shirts? It's a good thing you all are homeschooled otherwise they'd walk into class and eventually someone will ask if they own anything else or comment that they wore that shirt last week on the same day of the week.
I figure learning to take care of less really well than have too much and not care about it, and learning that having just enough is a blessing beyond compare, is more important than what other kids think. I've done a modified version of this myself and it's very freeing. You should try it sometime.
". . . I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience." Thoreau
Don't you find that once you find your favorite jeans you'd wear them everyday if you could anyways?
Post a Comment