The Dreaded Outerwear Overflow of 2009

Originally published on March 27, 2009.

Spring is a hussy. She is nothing but a little tease. She comes along, gives us a warm breeze here, a little melting there, then BAM! her miserable pimp Winter comes back, dumps more snow on our heads, and leaves us with a horrible case of the dreaded Outerwear Overflows. Ew.

Outerwear Overflow: a horribly unavoidable disease suffered by the closet or mudroom during winter-spring and summer-fall seasonal transitions when more than one set of outerwear is needed by members of a household in a very short period of time.

My mudroom has this. It's stuffed, full, and pretty darn close to the breaking point. And it's NASTY.

You know how it is. It's warm enough to pull out the raincoats and rubber boots, but it's still too soon to put the parkas and snowboots in storage. Cold one day -- warm the next. Then after that, it's snowing. In a span of a few days, you can easily need both sets.

Earlier this week, we got a pretty decent downpour. Yeah, rain. In March. In Winnipeg. Anyway, so my kids and I made our way to the mall to get my son his new Lightning McQueen rain jacket. Yay!

Wouldn't you know it, the Great Dump started the very next day. Not more rain. Oh, no, remember, we're in Winnipeg. It was snow. Of course. (And it hasn't stopped. I'm sitting at my couch looking out the window at our sidewalk, which my husband shovelled yesterday, but you wouldn't think it he'd even touched it because of the 2 feet of snowfall overnight.)

Needless to say, no Lightning McQueen rain jacket for my son to show off at school that day. It stayed home, hanging -- of course -- in our poor, diseased mudroom. Back to the parka. Boo.

And our wardrobe woes don't end there.

With us smack dab in the middle of winter again, my little girl now tells me her snow boots are too tight. Oh no! Do I upgrade her to size 10s now and hope they still fit in the fall? Do I have her feet sloshing around in size 11s which I'm sure will fit her in the fall? Or do I squeeze her poor little feet in her current size 9s for the remaining 1-2 months more of snow?!
Oh, wait -- do stores even sell kids' snow boots this time of year?! Yikes! I don't know! We just might be screwed...

So, yeah, this would all be so easy if we could just flip a switch and make Winter go away for good (or at least until Christmas -- snow is essential at Christmas). Enough teasing, enough taunting, enough leading us on.

Please tell me I'm not the only one going through this -- because I'd really hate to think I'm the only woman in North America driven to drink by her messed up mudroom. That would be really embarrassing.

.: This is an Original Canada Moms Blog post by Nenette AM who also writes about her sweet, snowed-under life at Life Candy.