Before I begin this post, I need to divulge a bit about myself. Growing up I was THE biggest slob. Any of my family members reading this will attest that of the 5 of us children, my room was BY FAR the messiest. When it was time to tidy my room, an excavation crew was brought in and garbage bag after garbage bag was filled with my things to be stored in the attic as punishment. We can only be glad that there was not the door-to-door charity donation schemes like there are here in the UK, or else I would have been going to school naked as my clothes and toys were handed out to others who may treat them better.
And so, Momma, when you read this, please make sure you are sitting down.
Over the last few weeks, two side my side developments have occurred in Ellis and I. I have felt a strong desire to have a tidy house and Ellis has had a strong desire for "My do it myself". My little shadow can not bear to be left out of any cleaning or helping or cooking or minutia of my day. Which can sometimes end in frustration for us both.
One particular area of tension is around the accessibility of Ellis' toys. Like many folks, we don't use a traditional toy box, but keep wee man's things in separate baskets around the living room and upstairs, so individual activities can be brought out without having to dig through piles of stuff to get the one piece that we need. Generally speaking this works well, as we have lots of shelf space for small baskets and it means things can be tidied up with relative ease.
Tidied up with relative ease by Mama and Dada, that is...not to mention the inevitable "Where's my X?" which usually eventually involves a a parent getting up and finding it for him.
And so to help enable even more of the "My do it myself", I had a vague idea that I should get some labels for his clothes and toys. A quick look online garnered a variety of pricey or inappropriate alternatives. So I trawled through Microsoft's clip art and made up 24 of my own.
Ok, bear with me here. I just want to reiterate that I am not a hyper-clean organised person. AT ALL!! In fact, I live in a general mess and lose things constantly. I actually have a closet that if you open things WILL fall out on top of you. There are people who don't like to bring their children to my house because it is so messy...my new-found need for tidiness probably only brings us up to grimy from filthy.
I ran them through the laminator (a Woolworths closing down sale purchase worth its weight in gold, but one can also use clear packaging tape), which in itself was a joyous experience, cut them out and stuck them on and viola! A wee boy with a bit more control over his environment.
Oh yes, now you too can be like me, for the bargain price of one click, you can download our uber-stylish toy labels for all of your organisational needs.
But that's not all...included in your free PDF is a set of 8 clothing labels as well.
Aren't you excited? I even threw in some labels that we don't need just because I thought it might help someone else. Though I would also bet there are loads of things other people would use that we don't...