Hats and Mittens

just buy some ribbon and sew it to the cuffs of the gloves and mittens! Or get the clips that attach them to the cuffs of the coat. I found them at Target last year.

I stick my kids in their coat sleeve or at daycare I put them in their backpacks. I also buy the cheap ones from WalMart so if they get lost it's not a huge deal.

HAHAHA! I love this site! Welcome to the lost world. If you find the place where lost things go, please bring back our lonely socks, my son's glasses, and my daughter's brown shirt that only goes with a particular pair of pants!

One of the great mysteries of parenthood is "where did it go?" The solution seems simple. Buy cheap hats and mittens and surgically attach them to your kids. But that is very unsanitary (bathing and such) and also probably illegal in some states, you might want to go another route. I take personal care of my daughter's hat and gloves. She is 2 and she cares more about making sure we take her sippie cup then being warm. Her priorities are a little wonky. When her hat and gloves are off of her, I put the gloves in the hat and shove the hat into the sleeve of her coat. I remember they are there when I don't see her cute little chubby hand protrude from the sleeve of her coat when I put her coat on her. Now, my son, who is now 9, was once a small rotton, loser of items. I used a piece of yarn. Attached one end to one glove and attached the other end to the other glove with my terrible version of sewing. I then threaded the gloves in one sleeve and out the other. This worked great! His hat was a whole other story. I didn't want to attach it to his coat, so I ended up sewing a piece of yarn to the back of it (the hat) and tying the other end to the string with the mittens. So, if he lost them, whoever found them would be very happy to have a complete set!

There is no permanent solution to the problem. Basically, like most issues we all have with their kids, you have to wait until they are 33 before they will grow out of it. I only say 33 because I am 32 and I still lose stuff.

What I do with my two year old son is as soon as he takes his hat and gloves off, we stick the gloves in the hat and the hat down the sleeve of his coat. So far this year it has worked.

um, you could buy some yarn and tie it on to the mittens ......... you don't have to buy it pre-made that way :)

we have a bag by the front door for everyone's hats, mittens, etc.

when you get somewhere, put the mittens in the hat, and the hat in the coat sleeve. that keeps everything together pretty well.

I have had to become very vigilant with the hats and gloves, it was driving me crazy! They have play gloves and hats at home and gloves and hats that are not allowed to leave their backpacks unless they are on their hands and/or heads, those of course are for school. At home as long as they are not wet, they go into the hat and glove drawer as soon as they come in the door. Gosh, I am sorry, I just noticed how young yours are so different strategy needed! How about sewing some string or yarn or somethign like that to the mittens. My oldest had those that were connected by string also when he was a baby and they were great and I can't remember seeing them in stores in a very long time! If nothing else, I saw at Wal-Mart a while back that they had hats for a dollar, you could at least keep a good supply of them and I am sure you can get the mittens at a cheap price too.

Buy, buy, buy, this is my advice to you. When mittens go on sale buy them up. Keep them in the same place in your house, sometimes lost gloves come back , mostly they don't. After three children and 25 years of lost gloves (and socks)that is the best I can tell you. Also can you crochet, or knit? Make a line to run through the coat fot the kids, use snaps, or buttons to make the mittens hang on the jacket. make sure you attach the line carefully so they dont choke themselves, of just make small ones from the sleeve to the mitten. Good luck. I actually with my 3rd child sewed his hood onto his coat. You gotta do what you gotta do, and necessity is the mother of invention.

I was at Wal Mart last night and saw the clips that hold mittens to the coat in the baby/toddler section near their mittens, umbrellas and hair clips.

What I do to try to prevent lost hats and gloves is to put the gloves inside the hat, and tuck the hat in the sleeve of the coat. That way, every time they go to put their coats on, the hat and gloves are right there.

Hope this helps!

They make mitten clips that attach the mittens to the coat, with a little bit of elastic between the attachment clips. Try Babies R Us or Target perhaps.

This is something that will be a problem forever I think! I try to keep all of our hats and gloves together... and my 3 older boys are in grades 4 and 6, so they take a little more responsibility now, but whenever hats and gloves go on clearance, I buy up a bunch of them!

Hello. It sounds like you have 2 boys. I didn't have this issue so much with my daughter, but then again we did do the string through the coat thing. We had to sew it on. My mom actually did it for her. I/my son lost a few pairs last year also. Your boys are really too young to learn the lesson. I made my son buy his own gloves with his Christmas money lastyear and he hasn't lost them since. When you take off coats you can get them in the habit of stuffing the hats/mittens in the sleeve or find a clip that attaches them to the coat. Sorry, boys are just harder.

Hi! We have a hat bastet behind the front door, all gloves and hats and scarves go there when we get home. While we are out, I use safety pins (the long sturdy ones) to fix gloves to my son's coat. Or in the past, have sewn yarn the wrist to make my own "thru the sleeves" mittens. Good luck.

E.,

Isn't the secret life of moms amazing? Who knew that in addition to feeding, bathing, clothing, etc., you would have to be a mitten wrangler? As if we didn't have enough to do! Hehe.

I've been lucky, my children haven't often lost theirs in the past. Probably because I tend to not let them have "control" of their hats and mittens, at least when I'm around. They wear them when they are outside and the moment they come in or we come back from wherever we've been (usually when we are getting out of the car), I take them and put them in a bin in the laundry room on the way into the house. When they are at school, the teachers do the same thing, so it hasn't been an issue for us.

I did find at Meijer the elastic mitten holders with the very strong metal clasps on the end a few years ago for a few dollars. I usually shop at Target, but I couldn't find them there. Each holder is about 4 inches long made of 3/4" wide white elastic. You might get two sets and use one of the second set to attach the hat to the hood or collar of the coat. It might be strange (and uncomfortable?) but at least it wouldn't be lost.

Anyway, I, for one, am convinced that lost hats and mittens go to the same place that missing socks go. Now...socks...that's my real problem. I must have the Bermuda Triangle for socks at my house.

Good luck!

Great idea from my mom that saved us from losing our 3 girls gloves and hats... Buy about 3 yards of 1/4" thick elastic at Wal-Mart. Stitch or safety pin a glove on the end of the elastic and put the elastic through the end of one arm, across the inside back of the coat and down the other arm. Leave about 10" extra and cut the elastic to stitch or safety pin the other glove on this end. With the hat, you can stitch or safety pin the elastic to the inside back collar of the coat leave about 8" extra and stitch or safety pin the other end of the elastic to the inside back of the hat. This idea makes the gloves unattached to the coat and easy to take off and wash or switch to another coat, but makes the hat a bit harder to take off to wash. Hope this works...

Then buy YARN silly :)

A.

The reason you don't see mittens with string any more is because they were deemed a hazzard for strangulation. Just like strings to tie up hoods on coats. We used the clips on mitts from kids/babies r us. They worked well. You could add a string to your own mitts and attach them in the sleeves as well. I would stay away from the long string though. You would feel awful if something every happened to your children with this string. Also get a few extras from the dollar store, that way you always have one.

You might try sewing a button on the top of the gloves. Then use about a 1 inch narrow piece of fabric or elastic and twist it into a loop. Put a few tack stitches on the top of the coat sleeve (on the inside) that goes around the wrist. The kids probably will not notice it. Buttons are really cheap. It might take 5 min per coat to sew and make the loop per set of gloves.