With winter upon us and 4 under the age of 6 (in February) I was wondering if you could share your ideas for keeping all of the hats, gloves, scarves and boots in order?

I (will) have 3 girls and 1 boy and plan to recycle everything through them, but right now I have all of the kids stuff shoved into 3 collapsable canvas open drawers in our mudroom. Most of it is the wrong size but will be the right size next year. My and DH's stuff is in a large underbed box that is unreachable on the top shelf in a closet.

HELP!!

Before I attack this mess (and add more to it at Christmas) I would love to hear your ideas so that I know where to start.

Thanks,
Lori

This is what works for me:
I have a small hall closet. I first assigned my closet a "role" I decided it would be used for the following:

- Coats (only those we use regularly - special item coats like ski jackets went to the storage room)
- Hats, gloves, scarves,
- Sunscreen
- umbrellas
- outdoor workout gear (pedometer etc)
- Lint brushes (we have a child of the furry variety too)
- Emergency response kit (ie natural disaster)
- Dog leash
- Few outdoor toy items (bubbles, chalk, etc)
- "to go center: dry cleaning, items for repair, small bag for donations."

I bought a hanging shoe rack (the kind with cubbies) and labeled each 'shelf' within the rack.

My DH and I each have our own cubby on the top,
followed by lint brushes, sunscreen, pedometer and umbrellas), etc etc and then I use the lower cubbies for our 3 year old. When people get home I make them put their item in the respective cubby. This has worked so wonderfully because we all know where our stuff is and the closet stays clean.

I hope you get the idea of what I'm saying and it works for you. If it would be helpful I can take a picture as well.

Good luck!
Laurie

P.S.
The hanging shoe/sweater racks work wonders elsewhere too. I also have one in our spare bedroom that holds our Iron, buttons, mending supplies, plug in air freshners, and spare shampoo and other toiletries for guest baskets. I have one in my 3 year old son's room too and use it to hang his shoes (so he can reach and put them back,) as well as pants.

For the stuff that's in use, I don't have a great system. I have a section of the wall unit that's got bins in it to hold the spares for the season, and the stuff that's currently in use stays in the pockets.

I was just getting ideas from the container store and that seemed to be a good solution for us. I want to get a bunch of horizontal racks to put boots on (little kids boots on the bottom) for half the closet and hang coats in the other half. I was going to get mesh cubes for below the coats for hats, gloves, scarves, etc. for each of the kids. What do you think? I also do like the idea of big tubs that get put away each season. Maybe instead of being uber-organized, I'll just make sure to throw all the kids' stuff there at the end of the winter. It's not that hard to get it out at the beginning of each season. Bonus is that I already have the large bins!! yay!

The Elfa products go on sale in January.

I think this could be great, but my experience w/ those mesh cubes is that they're a bit too tall. My vote: Use them, but install a spare square of mesh as a shelf, dividing the cube in two; attach it with plastic cable ties (or zip ties, some folks call them)