This week, I learned that Peanut hasn't been using the bathroom at school and that he strongly prefers to have his own clothes to put on after an accident. The bathroom bit I understand because it's a bit scary. Of course - it's stalls on his own and I neglected to ever take him for a look around. Today he came home from school and told me he had used the toilet, though, so I think that's taken care of itself.
The clothes bit presents different dilemmas. I try to keep his wardrobe a bit limited. My basic list is five bottoms, five tops, a couple overs (sweaters/hoodies), and two party shirts (dress shirts). Lately, though, we've been stretching between laundry days. Every once in a while, the last shirt or pants actually come out of the drawer once in a while, effectively announcing that it's laundry day again. Taking a shirt or pair of pants out of circulation can have a noticeable impact on our laundry/clean clothes balance. And the fact that I'm worried about this at all is fairly worrying in itself, but that may be entirely another topic.
The mama stand-by solution for an uncomfortable situation (like having to leave a set of clothes at school for a few weeks until we're sure there won't be any accident) is to pretty it up and sew. In this case we made a simple drawstring bag. Peanut picked the retro orange floral fabric, I picked the blue to contrast. The floral was from a second hand pillow case I found at a thrift store a couple years ago. The blue came from Ikea. I used a light twill tape for the straps, so we'll see how that holds up. The apple is hiding a little cheesecloth patch with his name stamped on it using a name stamp I made for him last Christmas. We'll see how that holds up, too. The bag's at school now, hopefully not to be used ever.
Out of curiosity - how do you figure out how many clothes the kids need?
just checked in for the first time in a while - haven't heard from your sister either so Im doing a T family check in - HELLO from the Ks in CO! We do 8 pairs per child (a weeks worth plus a spare for accidents.) I do laundry on sun/mon (4 kids now = two laundry days) and that keeps us balanced - but with school we have uniforms - so I get 6 sets for my son and my girl has 4 pants 4 skirts 6/7 shirts and 3 tights we can mix n match it all and each two school only sweaters (logos are on these) And then 5 street clothes outfits for weekend or break ect. But for school spares I would just leave something hes about to grow out of and needs replacement anyways if it tosses off your balance. Or pants with a hole , something your dont like ect - after all they are emergency only clothes. A few extra sets helps if you get sick n cant do laundry on laundry day.
ReplyDeleteHello to you, too! I'm reeling at the thought of two laundry days, and so impressed by the way you keep up and have a sense of humor about it. We ended up putting summer weight pants in the urgent bag. So it turns out that he's been getting by on five pairs of pants - one of which aren't warm enough for the weather we're getting! On the upside, I live with Mr. Laundry. He believes in the load-a-day method. Usually, if I start a load in the morning or afternoon, he's the one to finish it up in the evening. We'll add that to the Thanksgiving thankfulness list!
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