With the weather getting cold, it’s time to start preparing for the seasonal onslaught of jackets, coats, mittens, gloves, hats, earmuffs, and more!  Every time spring comes and I don’t have to keep track of all of this anymore, I give a sigh of relief!

Having been blessed with a large family where everyone is home all day, having a way to keep things under control is crucial.  Otherwise, we’d be swimming in winter paraphenalia around the clock!  I don’t have the luxury of having coats hung or boots lined up somewhere else during the day.  And eleven people make for a lot of winter outerwear!

I recently reorganized our coat closet to get ready for winter.  Our coat closet is extremely tiny (as in almost pointless to have, since it’s not deep enough for a hanger to fit), so we have a freestanding closet that we use instead.  Everyone is allowed to keep one coat or jacket in this closet.  Since most of the kids each have a raincoat, jacket, and Shabbos coat in addition to the main winter coat, this is an important limitation!  I suggest that they keep the one they wear most often in the coat closet where it’s convenient for them, and put anything else downstairs (in the closet under the stairs to the basement).

Then there’s all the extra ‘stuff’ to deal with.  On the top part of the closet, I have two shelves.  On each of these I have two identical plastic bins – one for scarves, one for hats, one for gloves/mittens, and one for miscellaneous (earmuffs, head bands, thin rain ponchos, and single gloves – they wait here until their match is found instead of being mixed into the gloves box).  This year I clearly labelled each of these boxes on the side that faces out.  Last year I didn’t do it, and many times things were put into the wrong bin since some kids didn’t look to see what it was holding before throwing something else in.

I’ve learned that if you want things to be organized, you have to make it easy for people to follow your systems.  Some things are easier to simplify than others – labelling containers is an easy one!  So far this has already helped prevent a number of messes.  Last year they’d dump out two or three entire boxes of whatever it was they wanted, because things would be put in the wrong box.  Now that it’s easy for things to be put where they belong, only one box at a time is taken out, and generally what they need is close to the top.

I’m not rushing for the cold weather to be here, but at least we’re ready for it!

Avivah