In my three year old daughter's closet, I use plastic rings to connect two hangers to make an "outfit hanger". These "outfit hangers" keep matching tops and bottoms together. When my daughter picks out her clothes in the morning all by herSELF, (yes, she is a preschooler) she can select a whole "outfit" from the closet (she also helps assemble the outfits when we're putting away her clean laundry). Parenting books call this strategy offering a child "limited choices". I call it dramatically increasing the odds that my kid will leave the house wearing something other than her Curious George footie pajamas.I got the idea from the hangers that clothing manufacturers use for their toddler outfits, in which the pants/skirt hanger is topped by a large ring which slides over the shirt hanger. One day I was wishing that I had more of those hangers to organize my daughter's closet, and it occurred to me that I could just create my own.
The plastic rings that I used are called "split rings", and they are actually drapery hardware designed for use on the back of balloon shades. I pulled mine off of some cotton shades that were slated for conversion to tablecloths. (You'll recall from my earlier posts that fabric items in my house rarely serve the same function for long!) I think that regular plastic roman shade rings without a split (found in fabric stores in multi-packs) would work even better, assuming that the diameter was large enough to accommodate two hangers. Of course, I also save hangers from new kids' clothes, such as the Carter's hangers, for the same purpose.Happy Organizing!
