I mentioned in my last Wrapping up the Week post that I was working on a major reorganizing and de-cluttering project. The project was inspired by this post at Starry Sky Ranch. I had never heard of the the family closet concept until my sister forwarded that blog post to me. It was life changing!…well at least homekeeping changing! The last two weekends I have kept my dad busy installing closet bars and shelves in our master closet, as well as a shelf in our hall closet.
My dad and his helper “Hi Poppa!” she says, six thousand times! Anyway, we moved all the clothes from the kids closets and dressers to their new permanent home in our master closet. In the process I switched out summer clothes for fall, got rid of and stored outgrown/wornout clothes. I do believe I touched every piece of clothing in this house.
The kids hanging clothes are on a bar under Bob’s hanging clothes, and the drawer items are in new storage containers.
Each child has one small container for socks, under.wear, and pajamas. Each child has a larger container for everything else. So far it has worked wonderfully. No bedrooms with clothes erupting from dressers and no floors covered with tried on and discarded clothes. No one coming downstairs with a younger siblings clothes on (yes, that has happened!) and no one coming downstairs with jeans and a sweatshirt on a day when it is going to be 90˚.
I love this idea!! I am also a Catholic homeschooling mom
I only have 4 so far but I am preparing our new house for more! Thank you so much for posting this!! Tell me something, you said every evening you put the children’s clothes on top of their dresser. Does that mean they still have a dresser in their bedroom? Our bedrooms in the new house are not big enough for dressers so we were thinking about leaving them out of the bedroom and only using the family closet. Could you do it without a dresser in their rooms? Just curious to see your thoughts on pros and cons of dressers in the bedroom. Also do the older kids get their own clothes? Thanks for any input. I am really trying to figure out how to organize better!!! 
Thanks for reading Kathleen! We had dressers in their rooms before we switched to a family closet. We kept them because we had them, but they didn’t get used for clothes. When we moved to FL in the fall we didn’t bring the dressers with us b/c they had seen better days! Currently our girls do not have a dresser in their room and either do our younger boys. I’m getting ready to overhaul our system again as our kids are getting older. My 13yo does have a dresser in his room and keeps his clothes in there, he takes good care of his things. My older girls, 10 & 9, would do fine to have a dresser in their room. My younger daughter and younger sons – not so much! I will have to post an update when we get settled in our new house!