Working on Clothes

With 9 kids, we obviously have a great many clothes in our house. AND, the sweet children keep growing, so they outgrow clothes at a fantastic pace.

Last week, I went through all the clothes of our 7 younger children.  I pulled out clothes that were too small.  I moved clothes that had ended up in the wrong drawers.  I donated clothing that I knew the children would never wear.

I pulled out all the clothes that were too small for Rose and put them in the donate pile.  I pulled out all the clothes that Daniel has outgrown that are very "male" and put them in the donate pile.

It is a pleasure to get rid of those clothes as we have many tubs of stored clothes, and removing some makes our storage room tidier and easier to navigate.

I tend to go in spurts on jobs like these.  I don't know what normal people do -- maybe they plan one day a month to work on clothes?  I wait for the desire to seize me, and I run with it.

I also looked through my clothing, but I've been quite diligent and really don't have many clothes to discard. I saw a meme on Facebook suggesting that for Lent, we should pick one item of clothing from our closet each day of Lent and donate it to charity. I thought, "I wonder how many clothes I have in my closet, total?"  So I counted. Answer, 30.  I literally have 30 garments in my closet. So...I don't think I'll give them all up for Lent :-).  Of course, I have way more clothes than that since I have a dresser and a blanket chest.  But I think compared to most American women, I don't have many clothes. Because, ya know, I dislike clothes shopping so much.

And speaking of that, I was a true heroine today. Kevin took me to lunch (that didn't require any heroics) and then to Kohl's to search for pants that fit.  I don't have many pairs of pants right now that fit. Like 3 or 4 pairs.  So I gritted my teeth and went searching. I think I tried on 30 pairs of pants and found 2 that fit me the way I like.  From this, you will gather that I am picky. Yes, I am picky.  I like my pants to go all the way up to my natural waist, and that is SO not the normal style of jeans and pants in this day and age. I'm also long waisted, so even pants that are supposed to be "mid rise" are often lower than that on me. I just hate the feel of pants like that.  I also don't like pant legs that cling to me, I like them loose.  That is also atypical.  So yeah, 2 pairs of pants that fit. That's actually a major win for me.

I'll finish with this picture of our basement room.  The table on the right has the horrible pile of clothes that were removed from our dressers and closets, and which need to be put away in tubs or put in the donate pile.  At the end of the room are 5 tubs with items ready to be donated.