If your house is anything like mine, you have dress up clothes scattered everywhere around the house from the kids bedrooms, to the playroom, to dress up shoes in the kitchen to trip over every time you turn around! With 3 kids, 2 girls and a boy who have vivid imaginations and love to pretend, on any given day I have a Sleeping Beauty dress on my bed, a princess wand on the bathroom floor, dressups scattered all over the hallway and a pirate cape in my baby's crib (because he won't let go of it when he goes down for a nap, because he loves the softness of the velvet and the china silk lining against his face). There is a great need at our house for some toy storage and a place to put the dress ups.
First of all, my kids are terrible about hanging things up. They don't have the dexterity to put a dress on a hanger yet and have it stay. So hanging it up in a closet is not really an option for my children to put away their costumes by themselves. A good alternative is hooks. You can get the adhesive kind that you just stick on the wall or you can get decorative hooks that you screw in. Your kids can then easily hang up their princess or pirate clothes on the hooks to keep the floor tidy and neat and also so the costumes last longer. This concept also teaches them respect for their special things and helps them to clean up by themselves.
Another idea would be to purchase a toy box or a dress up trunk for only their dress up clothes. They can just stuff their things in there when they are done playing with them and Voila! Clothes off the floor. Toy boxes or dress up trunks are great because they are inexpensive, an easy way for your child to clean up by themselves, and you can put them anywhere and they look beautiful. However, the one down side with dress up trunks is that if they are deep, you can't reach the things on the bottom, so the whole thing needs to get dumped out, or the things in the bottom don't get played with as much as the things on the bottom.
An under the bed plastic storage box seems to work well for dress up costumes. They can get their box out when they are ready to play dress up and put it back when they are done. This method works great when toys are stored exclusively in the bedroom of the child.
We have large built in storage drawers in our basement playroom for toys to go in. It works very well. The kids can fold and put their dress up clothes in the large drawer when they are cleaning up. It is simple and easy for them to do. They also put their princess accessories in there, as well as their capes and previous Halloween costumes in the drawers. Over the years, we have had to expand to several drawers for their dress ups as dress up clothes seem to be a timeless, ageless gift that they always ask for and play with on a daily basis.
Organizing you dress up clothes can be fun and rewarding. Spending a few minutes in the short run will make a big difference long term!
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