Hand that Down

With so many boys so close together in age I've had to come up with some creative ways to organize and pass the clothes down from one boy to the next. I have a whole system of marking the tags in each piece of clothing and labeling the crates in the attic so that I don't mistakenly bring down the Easter baskets when I really was looking for winter boots.

And we pass EVERYTHING down.

Well, except for underwear because that's just disgusting.

And not shoes because I have discovered that unlike girls, who wear shoes to cover their feet, boys have a much wider range of uses for their shoes, which makes them good for basically nothing after they wear them.

Boys apparently use shoes for..

a. Brakes. Why bother to peddle backwards when you want to stop your bike, when you can much more easily drag the top of your shoes into the pavement and rip them to shreds?

b. Shovels. That rock in bedded in the yard must be removed and "oh look" your shoes will do the trick if you kick and dig with them until the dirt has covered the shoe so deeply that you can't remember what color they were originally where they looked so nice on the shelf in the store.

c. Exterminator. I have seen boys sneakers with a sample from every family, genus and species of animal in North America smashed into the heels of their shoes. Run bug - run!

d. Amphibious Vehicle. Every puddle calls their name.

And they often smell. I don't know if boys don't change their socks often enough or if they have sweat glands in their toes, but I'm just saying that you should not breathe deep in some of my boys closets.

So it's off to the shoe store tomorrow to buy each boy all new shoes because I threw all the old ones in the garbage.