We recently finished our semi-annual clothes swap.
Once a year we take a day (and we do try to get it all done in one day) to swap our winter clothes for our summer clothes, or vice-versa. I scheduled it deliberately for a time when all five of us would be home and braced for the inevitable tears.
Not only do we swap cold weather clothing for warm weather, but this is also the inevitable stepping up point where a child that has been wearing 7 year old clothes moves into the 8 year old bin, and so on and so forth.
This leads to trauma. Several years ago I had to physically restrain Felix from rooting through a packed donation bag for his (3T) Snuggle Monster pajamas, which only came down to his 5 year old belly. James, who suffers from an excess of Peter Pan syndrome, always develops a wilted look as the evidence of the inexorable progress of time piles up around him in the form of teenage-size jeans.
This year it was Owen who melted down. I'm not even really sure why, because there weren't any specific items that he declared himself to be overly attached to. But he did (against instructions) root through piles of clothing that had already been sorted, offer continuous commentary on what size he thought each item being unpacked from a bin might be, and generally refuse to let parents out of his sight for a moment. He repeatedly called out against our (discreet) packing up of beloved common items that were either too small or too grass-stained for further use into the donate bag or the trash bag.
He called names, he shouted a lot, and generally made calumnious accusations. He apologized later for being so "worked up."
Some of that suspicion is justified. We definitely did (finally) bin the Snuggle Monster shirt, as well as several Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles items and countless pants that had holes ripped through the knees.
It was a sweaty and emotionally taxing morning of hauling rubbermaid bins up and down from the basement and unpacking and repacking dresser drawers.
And the work continues once everything is sorted, because this really is the best time of year to carefully fold every item of clothing that we have out into neat stacks that allow the dresser drawers to close tidily and for each child to see every available item when he opens a drawer.
It's also a reset for the adults. Neither J or I use a dresser, so we keep our clothes in long under-bed rubbermaid rectangles. This is extraordinarily space efficient, but it's easy for clothing to get unfolded and to mass itself in heaps when pulling the bins in and out from under the bed. Also, not to name names, but one of the adults who lives in our bedroom has a bad habit of wearing clothing and then resolutely refusing to either put it back in the clean laundry ("it's been worn") or into the dirty laundry hamper ("it isn't so dirty that it needs to be washed yet") and thus piles her jeans and sweaters into the third storage option. (A heap on the floor)
We all needed a reset--and we got it. The boys all have shorts to wear again, their pants reach all the way down to their growing ankles, and we even pitched all the too-small shoes and the single shoes whose partner disappeared somewhere. (There were a surprising number of these.)
J and I purged as well. Our clothing bins are neatly folded and organized, and we are ready for six months of warm weather. I vote, and I think I would have her support, that instead of having winter next year we just continue with shorts and t-shirts weather for another 12 months at least. It would save me a lot of trouble unpacking all the basement clothes.
