We chatted about family closets some time back. I was sending links to a friend yesterday and found this one. She includes many photos of individual shelving units and floorplans. Notice in particular her use of clip art to help children sort and find their clothes.

Picture labels work well no matter where the clothes are stored. It is also a great idea for toy bins. You can find bin labels here. This blogger made photo labels for those ever-so-wonderful canvas bins. (I want some!)

Now, know you will need a little time for this next link. Ohdeedoh held a Now You See It, Now You Don’t contest to highlight the best ideas for children’s toy and clothes storage. I love the custom labels in this closet.

I am thinking more and more these days about the common thread in many dear friends essays about organization. Ultimately this is a stewardship issue. I was reading Meg Lund’s article about Knowing and Respecting Our Stuff. She makes some compelling points. If we make a sweater for instance, we spend time selecting yarn and patterns. We spend even more time crafting it. If a hole should appear we would immediately grab a darning needle and repair it so as not to see all our hard work lost. She contrasts this with our vast pile of throwaway possessions, some of which we are relieved to see broken so we have an excuse to rid ourselves of them.

The truth is we can only properly store and care for a limited number of things. This concept is a challenge for me. In a thrifty household we rarely spend a great deal on any one item. If clothing wears out we don’t sweat it. Apparently we don’t sweat it when toys and school manipulatives wear out either, judging by the deep cleaning done this week. : / It occurred to me that we have passed on a bit of a throwaway mentality to the children. There is only so much they can be expected to revere. We should have limited our stuff to just that type of item. Otherwise it is hard to instill in them the proper appreciation necessary to be good stewards.

I haven’t worked out all the answers by any stretch. I have decided I want to be very selective with what is presented in the school room. I will only make homemade school supplies that are of high quality. Otherwise I will purchase or go without. With clothing, we continue to pare down to a few nice outfits which can be easily stored in the available space. If we exceed that space it breeds poor stewardship – read: cramming. Right now, laundry has been very feasible. Hopefully, similar culling in the school room and craft areas will make those spaces as manageable.

Enough random thoughts for one day. Thank you to all the very sweet ladies who sent birthday wishes! I admit this one was not high on my list. 40 was at least a milestone. 41 is just, well, older than 40 lol!