Getting toddler dressed tip

Mornings can be a bit crazy at our house. Some mornings I'm off to work and Chubs goes to daycare. We are on a tight timeframe to get up and out of the house in time to have a non-rushed drop off and for me to get school on time - we need to be out of the house by 7am. Other days I don't need to be out so early but mornings can still be a bit stressful. Chubs gets to a certain time where she starts to go stir crazy.We live in a small unit with no backyard, so we go out every day.

We do many things to make morning easier, especially work days. These include:

- Daycare packing list; packed the night before
- Lunchboxes packed the night before
- Clothes for Chubs set out weekly

I know that my photo taking skills are rubbish, sorry. Theoretically, every Sunday night I fold the week's clothes and put them away. This doesn't always happen, but it usually does. When I am putting the clothes away I check the weather forecast for the week and I put Chubs' clothes for each day into this hanger which I bought especially. I put her shoes in as well when it works, although she often wears the same shoes so this doesn't always work. I also put in her first nappy of the day so it's 'grab and go'. I sometimes put the same clothes from that week to save double handling (basket to hanging shelves means that I don't have to put the clothes in the drawers) but obviously she has more than five sets of clothes so I like to change it round a bit too.

Ideally, the hanger would be near her change table but that wasn't workable, so the hanging shelves are in the wardrobe on the other side of her room. If having to remember to grab her clothes from the other side of the room before she gets dressed, or needing to put her on the floor and on and grab them after taking off her night nappy is the biggest problem of my day, then I think things are going really well.

I am 'in charge' of the laundry in our house - Dear Husband gets other jobs like most of the cooking. I like that because I prefer laundry and with one person worrying about it I have a good picture in my mind about which clothes are where, what is clean or dirty, what is needed for upcoming events etc. The hanging shelves means that either Dear Husband or I can get Chubs ready in the morning without thinking about it - and not-thinking is exactly what we need to do in the mornings. I'm hoping that as she gets bigger that she can take over getting dressed herself and that having her clothes ready will help her to be more independent. We will wait and see what happens here.

I would have liked a seven shelf hanger but couldn't find one, so we just do weekend clothes on the day. And yes, I realise that Monday's clothes are still on the shelf - I didn't get to put the clothes away until Monday afternoon this week, so I skipped ahead to next week :)

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