I have 3 kids in 4 different sports, and have had more than that (sports, not kids) over the years, so we have more than our fair share of sports “stuff” around the house.  In order to keep the sports miscellania from literally being “around the house”, I’ve had to develop a system.

Now, I’m not saying it’s a life-changing system, but it works for us for the most part. I’d love to say that we just fold uniforms and put them away neatly in their rooms with the rest of their clothes, but as many of you know, it doesn’t always work that way.

When my older kids were young, if changing clothes once a day was good, changing clothes 8 times a day was better. They didn’t discriminate between play clothes, church clothes, bathing suits, costumes or soccer uniforms, all was fair game in “change your clothes roulette”, and that made for some interesting searches the night before the game, so I have a “thing” about wanting to know where the uniforms are.

The older 2 kids take care of their own uniforms for the most part, but our youngest, age 9, plays several sports and has quite a few uniform and practice things to keep in order. We use an inexpensive baker’s rack to organize all of it. The keeps things easily accessible, but the the shelves help maintain a system.

The top shelf is uniforms and associated accessories ONLY for whatever sport is in season. This shelf is “sacred”, and he knows not to get things from there unless there is a game, because he’s prone to wearing his uniforms all the time if left to his own devices.

The next shelf is cold weather clothing that’s obviously not used in summer, but he does have the occasional need for warm-up pants or a sweatshirt in a cold gym. The third shelf is a basket full of string tote bags since bags (and water bottles) seem to be disposable around here.

The bottom shelf is a round laundry basket that contains the “other” stuff for whatever sport is in season. Since soccer is getting ready to start back, it holds items such as practice clothing, spare shin guards and cleats and a ball pump. It used to be able to hold a ball, but as you can see on the right of the rack, the red bag holds his ever-growing collection of soccer balls.

We have multiple round laundry baskets, one for each sport, that we store on the top shelf of the laundry room, and we just change out the basket and uniform items on the baker’s rack with the sport season.

For example, when soccer is over, it will all go back into the soccer basket, and it gets changed out with the basketball basket, and those uniforms go on the top shelf, etc.

For us, it’s important that the baskets are different from our regular laundry baskets, so they don’t get sucked into the laundry abyss.

Even if you don’t share my driving need to know where the uniforms are at all times, how do you keep all the sports items in order?

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