Reduce, Reuse, Rewear – The Secret to Fitting It All On The Bus

Written by Aspen Lucas on 21 Jun, 2014. Posted in Family, Preparation

How do you fit clothing for a family of 10 (including 5 teenage girls) on one bus? We are about to find out.

I share a room with two of my sisters, and after just one day of laundry at least half of our floor disappears under our mountain of clothes. The pile is so high you could get altitude sickness at the top. After a week of warnings, Mom, also known as the family CEO, finally made us go through the clothes we had gathered over the years and get rid of every stitch of clothing we weren’t using. Three hours later, we ended up with seven bags to give away. Seven! Our strategy for packing includes three phases: reduce, reuse and re-wear. Let me explain.

Reduce. Get rid of anything that hasn’t been worn in the past year. We gather the clothes from the forgotten corners of the closet and put them in a white trash bag marked D.I for Deseret Industries.

Reuse. The little siblings look through our marked bags and pull out anything they like. This way they still feel like they have ‘new’ clothes without actually buying any.

Rewear. The bag then gets dropped off at Deseret Industries where they either get sold for very cheap, are donated to community charities or shipped off for humanitarian assistance. Your old high school clothes get appreciated and re-worn no matter where they end up.

And when its all said and done – as you wished – it fits it an iddy biddy living space!