Color-Coded Clothing

Keeping up with laundry for our five children is a major chore. Since our three boys are close in age and size and have many similar items of clothing, sorting and putting away their clean clothes is especially time-consuming. But I have come up with some ways to simplify the task.

1. When I buy underwear for the boys, I alternate sizes in white and colored fabric. For example, all size four underwear is white, size six is colored, and size eight is white again. Sorting the size eight and size four clothes is not hard because one set is obviously larger, and the colored size six clothes are easy to pick out.

2. Since all my boys like white socks with striped tops, I color code the sizes. When the socks are new, I sew a few stitches of colored thread in the toe of each sock—a different color for each size. The colored toes make it easy to find the ones that are the same size.

3. When I make T-shirts and pajamas, sometimes I have enough fabric to make matching clothes for two or even all three of our sons. I try to make each one slightly different so I can tell the sizes apart easily—one T-shirt may have a V neck, another a round one; one pajama top has a band around the sleeve, the other does not. A friend of mine has modified this idea when she makes tab-front T-shirts for her sons. She puts two buttons on the smaller size shirt and three buttons on the larger size.—Loretta Evans, Idaho Falls, Idaho