Mommy Monday: a closet to promote preschooler independence

I recently made a few tweaks to the girls' closet and I am happy with the way it came out- with preschool starting in about a month (eek!), it's so important that they can put away, select, and put on their clothes by themselves, and it is a huge boost to their self-esteem and independence when they can do so!

On the floor of the closet and on the first shelf, I have several bins. This was the setup of the bins before I started moving things around:

Basically each child has 3 bins- one large one for bottoms and another large one for tops, and one small one for underwear. The small blue bin holds their socks (the one thing that I make them share!). One of the main things that needed to change was that they were constantly asking to wear socks, even though it's summer, because they saw them when they went to get out their other clothes for the day. The bigger problem, however, was in another closet:

Their main closet is in the hallway (so I can get to it while they're sleeping if I need to), but the small closet in their bedroom had all of their dresses as well. When they were younger it made sense because the bottom of that closet was taken up with diaper supplies, and they didn't really wear dresses unless they were going to church. Now that we are done with diapers, I'm clearing out the bottom space in that closet, and the girls are wearing more dresses during the week- which would be fine except that they can't reach the hanging rod in their bedroom closet! Time for some changes.

I first had to remove half of one of the shelves- thankfully I have these nifty shelves that are made with two boards that are each halfway-deep, so it was easy to take out one section once I weeded out some of the extra clothes I had sitting there. I got a $2 tension rod at Walmart and hung it in the space where the shelf used to be, and voila! A place for their dresses with their other clothes that they can reach! I also moved the sock bin up a shelf, so hopefully the girls won't be so tempted by them :) It actually was helpful to move the bin anyway, since the sides of the shelves are partially hidden by the dresses. 

Because of the way their closet is set up, the girls can sort and put away their own laundry and pick out their own clothes all by themselves. If you've spent any time with preschoolers, you know that anything that ends with "all by themselves" is a wonderful thing! How do you organize your preschooler's clothes? Share your thoughts and ideas below!