Easy Map Drawer Tags

Back in the olden days the "boys" room contained more than one boy. 

Now it's home only to our youngest; his big bro snagging a room of his own after the next in line left and the next in line before that left it vacant.

The girls each managed to hang on to their respective rooms.

It's a yearly chore to sort through clothes that have been grown out of or ones that have just wore out from wear.

I have not figured out how to slow down the growing process of children, therefor halting the drawer purging and the resulting necessary purchase of larger sizes of cotton.

For most of my married life that chore simply meant putting the saveable clothes away for the next in line as hand me downs, which kept the closets stuffed full of clothes the next in age was yet to grow into.

It's not like that anymore. 

There is no reason to stock pile jeans and shirts passed on from an 8 year old to his little brother, or save barely worn from a 15 year old for a 10 year old.  

When the youngest grows out of something now it's outta here. 

But youngest son is not an organizer.  And that's putting it mildly.

To be fair, at certain ages none of my boys really cared much if their dress shirts were rolled into a ball and stuffed into a drawer with their tighty whitey's.

But that fact could send me into a mom-rage when a band concert rolled around and that white dress shirt was nowhere to be found.

So today after I sorted through closet drawers, floors and shelves of piled up clothes, I decided to replicate tags on the once marked drawers of brothers past, to help that unorganized boy with a road map for his clothes.

And it's not just him that clutters his drawers. 

We all share laundry duties.

Judging by the variety of other family members clothes I pulled out of his room, I guess when someone doesn't know who an article of clothing belongs to, they just put it in the drawers of the youngest...... the wrong drawer at that, which clutters up his whole clothing Feng Shui.

Over the weekend I was helping the oldest boy, ahem..... Brawn..... clean the garage and I found two big road atlases. 

Makes sense that they were in the garage, I mean that's where the car is right?

I was just about to toss them thanks to cell phones, GPS and Tom Tom's when my better blogger sense got hold of me and I just stacked them on some other junk for a future project.

Who knew that project was going to arrive within days.

Supplies on the cheap - use what you have:
Ruler, paper cutter & scissors
Clear Contact Paper
Map pages
Those little circle ring things found at office supply stores

Rip out a couple random map pages.  Slice them to standard printer paper size, or don't use the ruler - like me - and have them turn out smaller.  Either way I proved size doesn't matter on my printer since they turned out fine.

Print out words to your liking on the map pages, and eye ball how big you want the tags, or use that ruler I listed in the supplies that doesn't exist for me.

Lay the tags on the the Contact Paper, cut them again leaving a tiny bit of Contact Paper over hang on the edge so the map stays encapsulated between the sticky paper.

*Disclaimer - Comfy Longs was the last tag, hence using up the extra long piece of contact paper.  I have now decided that really isn't the proper wording for boys sweat pants so will be making a new tag.

Last, use your paper punch to punch a hole at the top to thread your tag on the round metal thingy that is still in place on drawers from previous tags 17 years ago.

Making tags with maps isn't anything new, difficult, or earth shatteringly creative, but it's fun.

#4 son ended up with a bonus, two extra drawers.... empty.  

And Sweat Stuff instead of Comfy longs.

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