Piles! I have just been in piles of everything. Fall and getting ready for winter seems to involve lots of piles of items: wood, apples, winter clothing. It’s all a tremendous blessing, and also a good amount of work.

My main assignment is the winter clothing. I’m just about finished. It costs me about a week of work altogether. Some days are wholly dedicated and others are half days. Still, if I were shopping for all this stuff, it would take much longer!

We get free gently used (“school” clothing) from a few sources. It has been wonderful. I just shop through the bag we receive. If I don’t like it, it goes. I don’t feel obligated to keep a piece of clothing just because it’s free.

Our attached work/wood shed has an upstairs loft (soon to be bedrooms) where I keep the boxes of clothes. All my boxes are separated by size, gender, and season. They are labeled from Newborn right up through size 18 (so far.) When I say gender I mean only the ‘girl’ things say ‘girl.’ The rest are all boy!

The clothes are folded inside of trash bag bags inside of cardboard boxes. Our cats keep rodents away, but I may be moving my favorite things into Rubbermaid next year when all these boxes have to go into the storage barn.

First I do the laundry of the next person in line for needing a new set of seasonal clothing. All of the out-of-season things (like shorts) I pack away into its box in the loft. Then we find the ‘shopping boxes’ for that person, like ‘Boy, size 10-12, Winter.’ Someone carries them down for me and we go shopping! Whatever the person doesn’t like, we return to the boxes and put away.

At this time I also figure out what we need for that person. More jeans? Raincoat? Winter coat? Snowpants? New gloves? Any special favorites? Requests? It all goes onto a shopping list, and I can watch for sales. Over time I learned to recognize a good price as well as which items were quality and worth a certain amount.

I can usually keep track ahead of time of certain more costly needs, like the winter coat or winter boots, so that I can buy them at lower mid-season prices. I have learned not to wait until the prices are rock bottom, because by then, stock is extremely limited, and I am unlikely to find the size I need for next year.

With 5 boys and temperatures that can reach a -40’ F with wind chill from time to time, where during the middle of winter the 20’ F temps feel not too bad and 32’ F or above is balmy and call for celebration, we don’t mind paying more hefty for a good winter coat and real sub-zero boots which will last many seasons. The boys move through each other’s outerwear as they grow. As Will said at his last post, “ [Al] has the biggest feet so he gets the new stuff first."

 My Mom got to experience all the children getting their winter boots from the loft when we had our first snow while she was here. She said, “It’s like being at Wal-Mart!” as she saw different sizes of boots lined up across the kitchen floor and children trying them on.

Every Spring the children also have to go through their shoe boxes (in their closet) and bring me all shoes that are too small. Good shoes are packed away into my shoe dept. upstairs in the loft as well. All of my daughter’s shoes are packed with her clothing, so my shoe dept. is all male shoes, except the Baby shoes, which are packed with the clothing.

Sound manic? Not yet. Mothers, you know you have to be systematic and organized to keep up with the demands of rapidly growing children. 

So far over the years our major purchases have been under things, boot & coats, dress suits, shoes, and new baby clothing items. Everything girl needs to be purchased. I have no back log of those items! (It sure is fun shopping for her!)

Doing the seasonal change twice a year is time consuming, but I know God is providing for us with mountains of clothing, and my husband is blessed, too.

I save everything good so that one day, I will be able to bless others.