This weekend I felt the need to commence operation: Shoe Organization. I'm happy to report it was a success, although there were a few crazy obstacles to deal with.
With 4 kids, there is bound to be some craziness happening each day. This past Sunday was no exception. After
church I felt the need to organize the kids' shoe area. I thought it would be a quick and easy update, however that wasn't the case. We keep all the kids shoes in our laundry
room closet, along with their coats, winter hats and gloves. It's just a central spot for all the outdoor
wear and it works for us. We had a hanging
shoe organizer for my two oldest kids and my 4 year old's shoes were on the floor in bins. She started out having just one bin, then she got more and more
shoes so now she has two over flowing bins. The baby only has 2 pairs of shoes and so far we keep them in his room, but eventually he'll get more shoes and his shoes will be stored in that closet too. Here is what the closet looked like before I organized it.
It was a little worse than this, but I had just taken out their heavy winter coats and decided to store them in their bedroom closets for the season to make more room in here. More room for what you ask? Well, let me tell you....
We love to go to yard sales. We're real bargain shoppers around here. So when I saw a huge hanging shoe
organizer at a yard sale Saturday, I had to buy it. It has 4 columns with 12 rows. So you could store one shoe in each pocket
for a total of 24 pairs of shoes, or one pair of shoes in each pocket for a
total of 48 pairs of shoes. We did a combination of both and were able to fit everyone's shoes in, even the baby's. I also have some boots on the floor under the organizer since it doesn't
reach the floor but comes close.
It was about this time that I realized the baby was in need of a diaper change. But before I could get to that, I heard a little knock on the laundry room door that leads to the garage. My 4 year old was outside riding her bike, or so I thought. When she came through the door, she had black stuff all over her hands and on the top of her head. She said in the sweetest, most innocent voice ever that she had found paint on the driveway and 'oopsy' got it in her hair. She didn't want me to go outside to see, and insisted that she could clean it up. I was trying to figure out where the black paint came from when my husband said it's not paint, it's grease. You see we have this huge moving truck in our driveway since my mother in law who has lived with us for the past 3 years, is moving out.
My daughter must have walked or rode her bike under the truck where there is all this grease.
Regular soap did clean it up so we used some grease cleaner with pumice to wash her hands. It took lots of scrubs but it finally all came off. I changed the baby's diaper, and my husband put him down for a nap. Then it was time to tackle the hair. I used the same grease cleaner to wash her hair. I thought I got it all but when I started drying off her hair, I noticed the towel was turning black. Next I used some dish soap and that worked to get the remaining grease out. At least my daughter was sitting still and not complaining the whole time I vigorously scrubbed her head. I think she knew she had messed up big time.
OK, so she is clean, baby is asleep and the two older kids are playing a video game together. This wasn't so bad. Of course one more thing had to go wrong. As my daughter was trying to get out of the tub, she slipped and got a bloody nose. She was crying so much I thought she might have broken it. She asked if it was bleeding and all I could think of was a trick my Grandmother used to do (I'll write about that trick later since this post is already getting lengthy). Anyway, I got her cleaned, calmed down and dressed.
Finally I could go back to organizing shoes. Here's the end result. The
closet looks so much better and more organized now, don't you think?
Here's a before and after comparison for you. I love a good before and after:
I'm so glad that project is done. Sometimes I think it's a wonder I get anything at all done with all the kid craziness interrupting me. Ah, but that's what makes life fun. I always say my life would be so boring without my kids.
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