Organizing the basement

I'm not quite sure why I had this urge to get the basement in order today, but I did! Having four children (soon to be five) can be pretty expensive! One of the ways that I save money is to keep tubs of clothes for the kids in the basement. I save the older kids' clothes (the ones that are still wearable!) after they grow out of them for the younger kids. Plus, I shop garage sales and thrift stores. Two years ago, I found a brand new pair of Stride Rite tennis shoes (purple no less!) for Olivia. They were $2, so I bought them and stuck them in the appropriate shoe bin in the basement. We just got them out today, and she put them in her closet! Usually, in May, we pull out next year's clothes bins and go through them. That way, I know what to shop for at garage sales over the summer. This May is going to be a little busy, so we did that last week. I used today to get the basement back in order, plus give it a good spring cleaning that was well overdue. Here's my storage area in my basement. I have all the kids' saved clothes, shoes, and jackets organized by size plus all of our holiday decorations and a tub each for Trey's and my keepsakes. It's a pretty good system that works out well.


There's also another issue I wanted to mention because it is close to my heart. I am super annoyed at all the companies that are using very sexual ads to market to children. Kids get to be kids for such a short time in their lives, I want advertisers to STOP marketing sexualized ads to children. Here is the ad and info if you are interested.
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/pressreleases/spongebobburgerking.html