SPACE INVADERS
I’ve got 12 kids and squeeze everyone into a four-bed house, here’s how
WHEN you have kids it can be hard to keep your home organised.
But spare a thought for Zoe and Ben Sullivan who squeeze 12 kids into their four-bedroom house.
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Zoe and Ben live in their Scottish seaside home with their 12 children: Elizabeth, Olivia, Noah, Evangeline, Tobias, Agnes and Joseph, two sets of twins, Charlotte and Isabelle and Leah and Erin and newborn baby Flo.
Taking to the family’s, Zoe said: “I’ve been talking about doing an organisational tips video because there’s lots of things that we do that might be helpful to other people.
“We’ve got a four-bedroom house, so it is not massive and we have lots of clothes.”
Starting in her full bedroom, she showed how she uses the Marie Kondo folding method to keep her whole family’s clothes neat and taking up half the space.
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She explained: “These are Ben’s T-shirt and when they were hanging up in the wardrobe they took up quite a lot of space, now they are folded up they don’t take up much space at all.”
Some of her kids store their clothes in plastic drawers, with Zoe explaining of son Joseph: “We haven’t got space for him to have a wardrobe or a proper chest of drawers.
“I know they are plastic drawers, but they are quite deep, we’ve probably 30 T-shirts in there and there’s space for more.
“He also has a box for bigger stuff like snow suit and onesies.
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“They kind of live in our room.”
She also has a rail in her bedroom for school uniform as it doesn’t fit in the kids’ rooms.
Zoe’s top space-saving tips are putting boxes under the bed for storing extra clothes, wardrobes in the hallway, and vacuum packing each age group’s clothes away for future kids.
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Speaking of her clever storage tricks, Zoe said: “The reason I want to do this video is I know lots of people struggle for space.
“It’s just to show that you can fit things in places you didn’t think they would fit.
“There’s ways and means of folding them down to make them smaller.
“There are lots of different options when you don’t have much space.”
Zoe revealed that her and her RAF husband rely on a military-style routine to keep their kids under control - and it can take HOURS to prepare.
Previously appearing on 5star's Me & My 10 kids, the parents revealed how they spend hours prepping packed lunches and labelling every sandwich so some of their fussier children don't go hungry.
RAF engineer Ben says he understands the importance of discipline from his work in the armed forces and that it has influenced his approach to family life.
Acknowledging how his military training has affected his parenting style, Ben - who joined the military when he was 21 - said: "Everybody knows where they’ve got to be and what they’ve got to be doing at any given time."
And when they're not rushing out the door to go on a family picnic, the devoted dad explained how "high pressure" mealtimes even have a strict routine.
He said: "“The quantities are measured equally and they are issued accordingly – according to rank in the house and age.”
Preparations at home for days out can take the Sullivans hours and Olivia is only too happy to give her mum and dad a helping hand.
She says that she does not mind doing jobs and chores with her parents and that having a big family was “fun and nice” rather than hard.
Zoe explains that all of the family helping each other is a crucial part of making things run smoothly in the Sullivan household.
For instance, the parents divide their 12 children into two people-carriers whenever they're out and about - with the younger kids going with Zoe while the oldest drive in Ben's car.
But even with their military-style preparation, it still takes the couple a total of three hours to prepare for a day out to the beach.
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In an honest moment, Ben opened up about how the struggle of stretching his salary to provide for his children makes him wish he could earn more money.
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He said: "The hardest thing about having 11 [now 12] children is the financial side of things. It’s having enough money to do what you want to do.
"That’s the one thing I’d say that I wish I could improve is our budget."
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