Taking up my time...

Here's what's taking up my time this week:

(Although this looks like a clothes bomb explosion, there are organized piles, I promise! :)

I'm doing a massive sort and purge of all the girls' clothes, shoes, socks, jackets, snowsuits, and boots.  Can you even believe the sheer volume of little girl's clothes in that room?  We're just one family, and we could hold our own church rummage sale.

M has been on vacation this week, so I had the extra time to get this project done... and it has been sorely needing to be done for a while.  If I had a penny for every time I stuffed a shirt into an overflowing dresser drawer filled with too-small clothes, or every time I said in frustration, "WHERE is your other shoe?  There it is!!  Oh, wait, these are suddenly too small," well, my financial worries would be over.

Plus, I'm looking ahead to make clothes purchases for the fall, and I needed to take inventory of what we already had so that I could spend our money wisely.  I used to have a good memory about our kid-clothes inventory, but since the third girl came along, I've just lost track of everything.  I mean, look at that mess!  Would you be able to keep track of that?  After a week of organizing, I think I've come up with a pretty good system that will help me have a better idea of inventory in the future.

Anyway, my main point in writing this was to say that as I sorted through the clothes, I was struck by how many times I said to myself... "Oh, Grandma made this one," or "Remember these hand-me-downs from so-and-so?" or "I got this one at the fill-a-bag-for-a-dollar sale at the consignment store."  It was an exercise in realizing how blessed we are with generous friends and family members who have given us so many gifts and beautiful hand-me-down clothes.  In looking at this gigantic pile of clothes on our playroom floor, I'd estimate that we've probably spent less than $300 on clothing for our girls over a period of almost five years.

(It helps having children that are all the same gender, of course.)

This project has only strengthened my tightwad resolve that providing clothing for your children on a very small budget can be done!  Even N, at almost 5 years old, is just as happy (if not more so) with a hand-me-down dress as she would be with one from Gap Kids.  I'm going to enjoy that while it lasts.

I'm proud of our frugality, but also very humbled by others' generosity.  A big thank you to any of you who have ever helped to clothe our girls.  We are very grateful!!