I have come across a few little design hack ideas to help keep my kids' overflowing drawers a little less so--and hopefully, in the process, keep the seven year-old from grabbing the tye-died tank top and gym shorts when it's 10-degrees and snowing outside.
1. For kids of reading age, you can order custom drawer labels like these nice ones from 3rd Ave Shore on Etsy, shown above. You can of course name them by clothing category, or give them labels like cold weather, warm weather, socks and undies. Depending on how many clothes you have, of course. Around here, we need like thirty drawers just for t-shirts. I have no idea where they all come from.
2. A while back, we found these great drawer stickers made specifically for kids' bureau drawers, which let you identify just which clothing items are in which drawer. They have the added benefit of being small, so if tees are mixed in with shorts and tanks, you're in luck. And they're not quite so obtrusive as a lot of options I've seen.
3. Another option is to use chalkboard labels, like you would on mason jars. (Provided your kids won't rub off the chalk every chance they get.) I really like the options at Etsy shop Decals En Folie which has lots of cute chalkboard decals, all ready-made in shapes like animals, hearts, clouds or my daughter's favorite, the moustache. You can also order any custom vinyl stick-on label at all including names or words from the shop.
To go graphic, you can check out Abby's Vinyl Wall Art on Etsy which has some cool smaller vinyl labels, like snowflakes, a rain cloud, or various signs of warm weather like flowers and birds. You can order each in the same color too and they keep a room looking stylish.
4. For a freebie, check out these free printable clothing drawer labels from Dadand.com which definitely do the trick. Just be sure to print them on something that can be easily taken down or repositioned. I saw this from experience as someone who has spent way too long scraping stickers off of furniture. (Thanks, kids.)
5. Stencils can be super simple and can be found at any craft store or our affiliate Amazon. Consider butterfly stencils or daisies to represent warm weather, stars for pajamas, and snowflakes for sweaters and cold-weather clothes. Then just spray paint, mist, airbrush or sponge-on paint. You can reuse the stencils for craft projects of course, and hey, if you're super crafty, create your own from designs you like on the internet.
6. If you're really up for a DIY, I just came across this genius decor hack on Martha Stewart and I have no idea why I didn't think of it sooner. (Which is why she's Martha, and I'm not.) It's a kids bureau drawer how-to that has you using tacks to create seasonal weather icons on each drawer, so that your kid knows just where the sweaters are--behind the snowflake--and where the "do not wear this right now at any cost!" clothes are--behind the sun. The site offers a free tack drawer template (PDF) so you know just where to tap in the nails.
I will be honest though, I'm not sure how many "rain clothes" you might actually have behind drawer number two, so either your kid has to understand that raincloud equals spring, or you're best off with two snowflake drawers and two sunshine drawers. That's kind of the way I see the world anyway.
