We don't have tons of money. We have to scrimp and save just to get by. Every penny counts. We are very thankful for all the people who have donated clothes and shoes to us so that we don't have to go and buy clothes for our children. Every year when I switch my kids clothes over to the new season clothes I usually have to go and buy one or two items TOTAL to make ALL their wardrobes complete. That's it. That's amazing considering we have 6 kids.
I have gotten boxes and bags full of shoes for my kids. At first I tried to put all the donated shoes in one bin and we would go through that bin whenever we needed shoes for someone, but then the bin expanded into two bins and then three. It got to be a big hairy mess. It would be Sunday morning and one of my girls would inevitably say that they didn't want to wear "those shoes" because they were too tight. We would probably be late for church, and I really didn't want to haul up three bins of dirty shoes and dump it out on my floor to go through it and try and find matches and the right size shoes.
I tried sorting the shoes by size in grocery bags, but they didn't stay sorted for long. I have a solution that now works really well. It takes up a little more space, but it's worth it in terms of sanity.
I have 6 bins. They are labeled:
- Girls' Tennis Shoes
- Girls' Sunday Shoes
- Boys' Tennis Shoes
- Boys' Sunday Shoes
- Summer Shoes
- Boots
That's it. When it's Sunday morning and one of my girls doesn't have a pair of shoes that work, I can quickly locate the Girls' Sunday Shoes bin and open it down in the basement and determine in about 2 minutes if there is a pair of shoes that will work for the despairing child. At the beginning of summer I just get out all of the summer shoes at once. It's wonderful.