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by Shelby Strong
If your house is anything like mine, you
have dress up clothes scattered everywhere around the
house from the kids bedrooms, to the
playroom, to dress up shoes in the kitchen to trip over
every time you turn around! With 3 kids, 2 girls and a
boy who have vivid imaginations and love to pretend, on
any given day I have a Sleeping Beauty dress on my bed,
a princess wand on the bathroom floor, dressups
scattered all over the hallway and a pirate cape in my
baby's crib (because he won't let go of it when he goes
down for a nap, because he loves the softness of the
velvet and the china silk lining against his face).
There is a great need at our house for some toy storage
and a place to put the dress ups.
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First of all, my
kids are terrible about
hanging things up. They don't have the dexterity to put
a dress on a hanger yet and have it stay. So hanging it
up in a closet is not really an option for my
children to put away their costumes by
themselves. A good alternative is hooks. You can get the
adhesive kind that you just stick on the wall or you can
get decorative hooks that you screw in. Your kids can
then easily hang up their princess or pirate clothes on
the hooks to keep the floor tidy and neat and also so
the costumes last longer. This concept also teaches them
respect for their special things and helps them to clean
up by themselves. |
Another idea would be to purchase a toy
box or a dress up trunk for only their dress up clothes.
They can just stuff their things in there when they are
done playing with them and Voila! Clothes off the floor.
Toy boxes or dress up trunks are great because they are
inexpensive, an easy way for your
child
to clean up by themselves, and you can put them anywhere
and they look beautiful. However, the one down side with
dress up trunks is that if they are deep, you can't
reach the things on the bottom, so the whole thing needs
to get dumped out, or the things in the bottom don't get
played with as much as the things on the bottom.
An under the bed plastic storage box
seems to work well for dress up costumes. They can get
their box out when they are ready to play dress up and
put it back when they are done. This method works great
when toys are stored exclusively in the bedroom of the
child.
We have large built in storage drawers in
our basement playroom for toys to go in. It works very
well. The kids can fold and put their dress up clothes
in the large drawer when they are cleaning up. It is
simple and easy for them to do. They also put their
princess accessories in there, as well as their capes
and previous Halloween costumes in the drawers. Over the
years, we have had to expand to several drawers for
their dress ups as dress up clothes seem to be a
timeless, ageless gift that they always ask for and play
with on a daily basis.
More
Information...
Organizing you dress up clothes can be
fun and rewarding. Spending a few minutes in the short
run will make a big difference long term!
About the
Author
Shelby Strong is a stay at home mom of 2 girls and a
boy. She is also a small business owner of an at home
business called My Cute Dressups. Visit her site at http://www.mycutedressups.com/.
She has seen the immense benefits princess dress up
costumes and boy costumes has made in the life of her
kids.
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