Clothing. Such a necessary thing. Such a pain. They actually need to be washed and taken care of. Putting them away is such a chore. Washing them just another chore.
Emma finds the chore of clothing to be just too much of a bother. She somehow has gotten rid of most of her clothing and doesn't want to bother with changing clothing on a daily basis. She has a fit when I make her go take a shower then she wants to put back on the dirty clothing. I tried to step back. She wore the same outfit for days and days. I wondered if she was trying to make it a control issue. Well, when I stepped back she never changed.
So I figured that I would take the clothing issue away and handle her clothing myself. She brought her clothing downstairs. An entire hamper of summer dresses and a handful of everything else! I washed her clothing (it smelled, obviously she hadn't been giving it to Michelle to be washed). Her clothing minus the dresses didn't even fill the washing machine. I know that when the weather turned cold I gave her some blue jeans. She doesn't have a single pair of blue jeans. We looked everywhere for them. She only has 2 pair of colored jeans and some leggings.
For a week I handed her clean, matched clothing on a daily basis. She loved it. She no longer had to wash, sort, put away or match anything. Matching is a challenge since she gave so much away. I am not buying her anything. I have some tubs of winter clothing to go through, hopefully some of it will fit her.
Every morning she was on me for her new clothing of the day. Obviously she wanted to change every day, she just didn't want to put the effort into ensuring that she has clean clothing. Michelle and Emma do their laundry together. They each pick their clothing up and put it in the hamper and take it to the laundry room. Michelle washes and dries the clothing since she can run the machines. Then they both take it back to their room and put it away.
Yesterday I decided that I no longer wanted to take on Emma's clothing. I felt that it was a laziness issue versus anything else. I told her that it was foolish to get rid of all her jeans because it made matching clothing hard. She was so mad at me. Stomping and yelling as she took her clothing upstairs. I did have some stuff matched and I noticed that she wore a set today. If she actually put her clothing in the hamper to get washed she wouldn't have an issue. The problem that she will have is Michelle flat out said that she has at least two weeks worth of clothing before she has to worry about washing. Emma used to be the same. Now Emma has to figure out how to get her laundry done on a weekly basis when Michelle has no interest.
Kayla is given a school outfit every day. I'm not even bothering with play clothes. I collect it back. Every single item has to be there. Her issues were peeing herself and hiding it and then the dogs finding it and chewing it up. She has many, many pairs of underwear, jeans and PJ bottoms chewed up. Bras too. She used to get Jasmine's hand me downs, but Jasmine is done growing and Kayla is now taller. So there are no hand me downs. I bought some inexpensive jr clothing from a lady but Kayla got really sassy about it, wearing it at inappropriate times so I took it all away. Everything is locked in her closet except school clothing which is in my closet. She HATES that I have control. She constantly says things to me like "Oh, so you have control of that for me, too!?" Yep, I do.
ReplyDeletePS Kayla washes her own clothes on Fridays separately because they smell so bad. She has to soak them in white vinegar.
ReplyDeleteMy three boys have all their clothes in the laundry room cupboards. They have just enough clothes for a week and according to the season. They change clothes in the laundry room and the dirties go right into the basket beside the washer. No collecting of clothes from around the house, no clothes stinking up and cluttering up bedrooms, no need for bulky dressers in the bedrooms. It also frees up closets for putting toys or whatever.
ReplyDeleteMy three boys have a week's worth of seasonal clothes in the laundry room cupboards. They change clothes in there and put the dirty clothes right into the basket beside the washer. No traipsing clothes all over the house, no clutter of clothes in the bedrooms, and no need for bulky dressers in the bedrooms. The closets are even free to store toys and such instead of clothes clutter.
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