A little while back my darling daughter decided to destroy her bedroom. Rocket got into her bedroom closet and unpacked every single thing I had stored in there. The closet was neatly organized, baby clothes she had outgrown off to the right of the door and clothes she didn’t quite fit into yet off to the left. Box after box of carefully folded, sorted, kids clothing. Packed away tidily inside old cardboard diaper boxes. There were also a few boxes with old baby toys and books packed up in them. However my wonderful daughter got into pretty much all of it, unpacked it and resorted it in a way that made sense only to her three year old mind. I was furious and distraught. I had invested so much time into washing, sorting and packing up that clothing. I had been saving it for the next Mom2Mom sale. Now it was all crumpled, decidedly unsorted and unpacked, in two foot high drifts across my daughters bedroom floor. For good measure she also took every book out of the bookcase, and every doll out of the toybox. Apparently unpacking is lots of fun. It took me an entire day to tidy up and repack her closet.
And then about a week later she did it again, but this time with her big sister’s help. Unpacking and destroying her closet was far too much fun. Big sister had missed out on the much talked about experience and now wanted to give it a try. I am not going to lie; when I walked into her bedroom and discovered the two of them buried three feet deep in her closet I lost my temper, something bad. The mess sat there for days, as I was not looking forward to repacking all of that clothing for a third time. Also they had gotten further this time, all the way to the back of the closet. Pretty much every possible box was unpacked. They had even taken down outfits that were hanging on the bar, waiting to be worn. Dresses and two piece outfits removed from their hangers and mixed in with all the rest.
After simmering down for a few days I eventually spent the afternoon trying to tackle the mess in Rocket’s room. Clothing, toys, books, all sorted into piles waiting to be reboxed. Then I started packing back up some of the clothing that was too small for her, just waiting to be put out at a sale. It was time consuming. I didn’t finish the job in one go. The packed up boxes were stacked neatly to one side of her room. The pile of yet to be sorted clothes still blocking her closet door from closing all the way.
The next day I was busy and the clothes sorting was ignored, and the next. On the third day Rocket decided to unpack the boxes yet again. I lost it. Almost in tears I sat down and asked her, “WHY Why must you unpack these boxes??” After hashing it out with her I discovered that 1)big sister and her had discovered some outgrown toys and books in with the packed away clothes, they suspected even cooler things were hidden away in there and so absolutely needed to open every single box to check and see 2)even when I tried to convince her there were no toys or other fun things hiding in her closet (and you could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t exactly believe me), there was still the clothing itself. Hidden in boxes it was a surprise. What colours would they find, what patterns? Dresses or shirts? The suspense was killing her. She simply had to know what was in the box, and she wasn’t going to take my word for it.
Now at the same time as this was going on, I had these Rubbermaid All Access Organizers sitting in my front room. I had received four of the large totes to test out. They sat in a giant cardboard box in my front foyer for weeks, while I suffered from indecision. It’s not that I didn’t like them. I liked them a bit too much. I took one out of the box, gave it a look over and giggled with glee at all of the ideas I had for where in the house to use them. However I couldn’t make up my mind. Should they go in the laundry room? the bathroom? or maybe the computer room? or my much neglected crafting area? So many ideas! But In the end, as tends to happen with so many things, my kids made my mind up for me.
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| Little Miss I Must Know What’s Inside! vs the Rubbermaid All Access Organizers. |
The Rubbermaid All Access totes ended up being the perfect solution for storing the girls’ outgrown clothes in. The clear side hatch let’s you easily see what’s inside, which keeps my curious children from feeling the need to pry them open and explore. The side hatch also swings open, giving me easy access to pull out just one or two pieces, without having to unpack the entire box. The clear hatch window even allowed me to catch myself making a mistake. Predictably the kids were distracting me as I was sorting and packing the clothes. One piece from a two piece outfit ended up in the Too Big box, the other in the Too Small. Looking through the side window I happened to notice and was able to easily swing the hatch open and grab the misplaced piece. Easily correcting a small error which would months later have driven me nuts when I took the outfit out for the little one to wear and couldn’t find the matching bottoms.
The other reason the Rubbermaid All Access Organizers rock for clothing storage is that I don’t think I’ll even need to repack them come garage sale time. It’s so easy to see what’s inside and to pull out pieces that catch your eye, I’m thinking I’ll bring them to the Mom2Mom sale and put the totes out on the table as is. Time saver plus great display come sale time? Win/Win.
Overall, I’m loving the new Rubbermaid All Access Organizers. Enough so that I’m planning on heading out and picking up a few more, so I can take all of the kids’ stored clothes out of old diaper boxes and put them into these awesome bins instead. (Because, at this point I’ve reboxed them all at least four times… what’s one more go?)
To learn more about the Rubbermaid All Access Organizers visit the Rubbermaid website, or connect with them on their Facebook page.
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