M-F Self-serve Wardrobe

Raising responsible and self-reliant children is really important to me.  At this point they are mainly in charge of keeping their rooms tidy (although the big kid has a few more responsibilities downstairs, too).  Even the little one puts her dirty clothes in the hamper, puts her books away before she leaves the room, and puts her (well wrapped) diaper in the trash.

I've started a "responsibilities chart" for the boy.  Every morning before he comes downstairs he has five things he's responsible for making sure are done.  One of them is getting himself dressed for school.  One day I came across this pin and heard beautiful music.  Here's my version.

(Sorry for the terrible pictures.  It's really hard to take pictures of the inside of a closet, especially on a dark rainy day.)

I had a couple of these closet organizers sitting in a pile - they had been used in a previous home, but weren't getting used here.  There were six openings, but I cut off the bottom one as suggested.  Them my son reminded me that he needs to get dressed for gymnastics on Saturdays - so maybe an S would be good, too.  Oops.  Oh well.

It hangs right by his hamper so it's easy and almost mindless for him to kill two responsibility birds with one stone.  And we keep all our shoes downstairs, but there'd be plenty of room to add them in, too.

It was super easy, too.  I just pulled up some big letters on the computer, traced them right from the screen, then cut them out of freezer paper.  I ironed the stencil on, just used regular paint since this isn't getting washed, and let them dry.  Perfect afternoon project to make me feel really good about accomplishing something.  And getting even a little more organization going in my home always gives me a boost.

We've been using it for just over a week now and so far so good!  One less thing for me to have to remember at night or rush to do in the morning.  That's always a good thing.