What clothes do you keep in drawers that your toddler is allowed to open?
My daughter, 21 months, loves to open her dresser drawers. She loves to try to dress herself and would have 20 outfits layered on her body if we left her in her room alone for a few minutes.
While its cute I am getting tired of refolding everything. It is her stuff, so I feel bad to say "No, you can’t practice independence, leave it alone".
Right now we have the top drawer with diapers, the second drawer with pajamas and socks, and the third and fourth drawer with pants, skirts, etc.
So, do you let your kids play with their clothes? She has a small walk-in closet so I could move all of her folded clothes onto shelves in there. Should I just leave the bottom drawer with a couple dress up outfits for her to play with and put the rest away or should I let her have all the clothes to try on?
(We hang up all shirts, dresses, etc)
Filed under: Toddler Clothing
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
move most of the clothes out but do leave some bits that’s she is allowed to play with, this way she still gets to play dress up which is good all round, and if the items get ripped, dirty or just need putting away for the 5th time that day its not such a big deal
get her a bunch of cheap t shirts of different bright colors
Lowest drawer is diapers. The other he can reach has play clothes (clothes that are faded or have small stains) Just trying to minimize the damage. lol
Well, I’m really glad that your answer wasn’t just to tell her that she can’t go into her drawer
Cause I bet that there are some people who would just do that or lock it shut.
Anyway, I think that it might work out if you put most of her clothes in her closet and just a few outfits in the drawer. That way she will still have something to play with and you won’t have to worry as much about cleaning it all up. Is she old enough to understand how to fold clothing if you show her how to do it? I’m sorry, I never know what ages are appropriate for children to do what activities lol but that might be a fun project too, to just teach her that if she is going to take clothes out, she needs to put them away. If she’s too young for that, then, yeah, just forget about it :X
I hang every thing up and leave the play clothes and dress up stuff where they can get them. When they have them all over the floor I teach them how to pick up themselves.
I let him pull his clothes out and play with them all he wants. Sure, they end up in a pile on the floor and he can’t find his favorite outfits, but that’s okay. I’ll help him fold and put them away when I put the rest of his clean laundry away, but any time between then it’s up to him. I figure that they’re his clothes, his drawers, and his room. If he wants to pull them all out and play with them, that’s his choice. He just has to deal with not being able to find certain clothes and having them be a mess all over.
I’ve learned that I don’t always have to fold them and put them back away. I can leave them as a mess until laundry day each week, and it’s okay. I can easily find something in the mess if I need him to look a certain way, and if not, he can dig through the mess himself to find the clothes he wants.
I don’t think that putting her clothes in the closet would be a great option because it just delays her learning why she shouldn’t pull them all out. She’ll learn to open the closet doors, and then you’ll be in the same situation you are now.
We keep all of my son’s actual clothes in his closet. His is fairly big, so we have enough room to keep a seperate dresser in there.
He’s into the "taking everything out" stage, so I put his dress-up/play items in the bottom drawers. There are also some old t-shirts that I use when he goes outside in the grass–that way if anything gets torn in there, it’s not anything important. Just leave her some outfits to dress up in and move the rest of the clothes. She’ll be happy as long as you leave her some to play with =)