Today’s tip comes from many years of late-to-church experience.  If your family has a tendency to slide into the back row 10 minutes after the meeting starts – you may want to read on.

We have nine o’clock church each Sunday morning.  Now, if I were one of those Moms that spent Saturday night ironing white shirts and setting out shoes, that nine a.m. deadline probably wouldn’t be an issue for me.  But I’m not.  I love to squander my Saturday nights doing non-productive things like enjoying a late-night movies with my handsome husband.  The obvious result is a very sleepy Sunday morning where I hit the snooze button as many time as possible before crawling out of bed.  Consequently, I’ve had to come up with a few solutions to help my kids with get dressed for church in a hurry.  This one of my favorites…

I love to use these cheap pants hangers to hold church clothes.  Rather than keep all the elements of a church outfit in different places, I keep all the pieces together on one hanger.  In this case it’s my Son’s hanger – the clips hold his pants and shirt and the hook secures the belt and tie.  When Sunday morning rolls around he just grabs the entire hanger from the closet.  After church, he just snaps the clean stuff back on the hanger and tosses the rest in the dirty clothes (after I nag him a bit, of course).  I don’t have a picture but we use the same trick for the girls’ church outfits as well.

Trust me, if you’ve ever wasted time hunting down a clean pair of tights or searching for a belt under your son’s bed you should definitely give this easy trick a try.  Just thought I’d pass it on.

I have 5 plastic drawers in each kid’s stack. I’ll list them from the top down.

· Shoes & Accessories
This one holds all those miscellaneous items like belts, slippers, hats & cover-ups. It also holds any shoes they don’t wear regularly. The shoes my kids wear on a daily basis (generally 1 or 2 pairs of casual and 1 pair of church) are kept in a big basket by the door.
· Underwear
This one is divided with foam core dividers (see previous post) into three sections. The first section holds undershirts and swimming suits. The middle section holds underwear. The last section holds socks and tights.
· Shirts
· Pants
· Pajamas

Dress shirts, jackets, and dresses hang on the rod above. My kids have fairly wide closets so I’m able to put two stacks facing each other in a closet with just enough room between for the drawers to open. However, when we had an apartment with smaller closets, I slid these under the beds and stacked one next to the crib.

As for the labels, I printed them on full-sheet sticker paper (I like Avery). I use laminating film (the cheap kind you buy in a roll) to cover and protect the label edges. I usually cut it about 1″ larger than the label on all sides.

These drawers offer one more bonus in my house. There’s about 8 inches of clearance between the back of the drawers and the side of the closet. I use that space as temporary storage for all the outdated clothes. Whenever I’m putting away laundry and come across something that doesn’t fit or is no longer in season, I just toss it back behind the stack.
Once a quarter or so I pull the drawers out and retrieve all the old clothes. I pack them by size into big tubs, label them, and stash them in the basement.

If you’re one of those people that can’t sleep at night because there’s a pile of unfolded clothes lurking behind your dressers, then this part of the system won’t work for you. But it works great for me . Just thought I’d pass it on.

My kids have a tendency to dump everything out when they’re digging for socks, undershirts, tights or other little items. I created these easy dividers for their underwear drawer to help them keep things organized. I bought a sheet of foam-core posterboard and trimmed it to the size of my drawer. I then used clear packing tape to affix them to the front and back of the drawer. I also covered the cut edges (on the top and bottom of the divider) with packing tape to keep them from getting worn.

I’ve used these drawers for years and think they were worth every penny. My kids are 3, 4 & 6. Thanks to these simple drawers, they’re all able put away their own laundry and pull out the clothes they need. Just thought I’d pass it on.  You can find the free file downloads for the various colors of drawer labels below.