How-Tuesday: How to Fit 10-lbs. of Potatoes in a 5-lb. bag AKA, Organize Your Kids' Dresser

So we've lived in a small home ever since we've had kids. This has meant lots of creativity, clutter purging, and organization. In our current home, we have a small 4-drawer dresser for my 2 older kids' clothes. Unhelpfully, my older daughter is a total fashionista and LOVES clothes, and we get lots of hand-me-downs. This leaves me needing to fit a LOT of clothing into a small amount of space. This is the best way I've found to do it.

For the shirts, first fold the sleeves back, and then fold the shirt in half, like this:

Then stack them with the necks all on the same side, and put them in with the necks facing the bottom of the shelf, like this:

Right now you can see the fold of each shirt, which is approximately the middle. I like to put the shirts in this way for two reasons. First, you can fit WAY more shirts into the drawer. Second, they're stacked in a way that you can see each shirt and no one (ahem, 5-year-old daughter) has to rip apart stacks of shirts looking for a certain one.

Pants are similar. Folded like this:

And then stacked in the drawer like this:

At the right-hand side of both drawers I have socks, underwear, tights, etc. We hang jackets, sweatshirts, and dresses in the closet.

Even when we have more dresser space, I think I'll still organize the kids' clothes this way, because I love that they can see each thing in their dresser. They wear a bigger variety of their clothes, and don't tear their drawers apart looking for a specific shirt. My kids love it too!