As a mother of two rapidly growing sports obsessed boys, my challenge living in an apartment whose storage capabilities seem to shrink at an exponential inverse rate to the boys growth rate has been and will remain storing their plethora of different equipment. We have balls in every shape, size and color and off course all the different bats, sticks, apparatus to match and don’t get me started on the footwear, I envy the frequency at which they get to change it (and not for style reasons !)
When I visit friends who have made that move from city to burbs, there are three rooms in the house that I lust over the most; the mud room, the laundry room and the basement, for me it’s these rooms that scream luxury. The rooms where you can hide away the drudgery that comes with everyday living. The saying out of sight out of mind is playing around in my head at the moment.
Like a lot of my fellow mothers, the task of entertaining all these different sports lies not only in finding a suitable storage space for all the equipment but in remembering where they last had it. I have found shin guards in the bathroom and mouth guards in the lego box before !! Needless to say my heart rate increases as we attempt to leave the house and everyone is scrambling.
On a recent weekly trip to Target to buy toiletries and trash bags, both of which I forgot to purchase as my attention was quickly drawn to the CLEARANCE section. I found myself looking at some rather cute storage ottomans. I had not come to Target to look for ottomans but as a frugal shopper the fact that they were reduced from $78.99 to $23.98 meant I had to buy them because as I later found myself telling my husband “it was a deal” something he has gotten accustomed to hearing though not quite understanding. Having gotten the deal I set about rearranging the kids sporting equipment from goggles, to shin guards, to mouth guards to flag belts, to you name it …. in these ottomans. RESULT !!! they now get what they need when they walk out the door and can put it straight away when they walk back in. Something I have found to be a lifesaver as their lack of attention spans usually means that by the time they walk in the door and turn the corner they have forgotten what I asked them to do and most importantly it means I get my grand entrance back and a normalized heart rate.
Anyone else suffer from this same condition? If so I would love to hear how you’ve overcome these storage wars. We have had this system going for 2 weeks and so far so good ….
Pretty On A String 