New Additions and New Adventures: Toy, Toys and More Toys!

My kids are blessed. They have more toys then they know what to do with. We try to make sure we are always giving some away as we get more for birthdays and Christmas but they seem to keep piling up. I have a friend who is good at packing some of the toys away and rotating them on a regular basis. I really like this idea but I struggled with how to do it. I forget about the toys I pack away until the kids noticed them in the laundry room so then I take them out for the kids to play with and then never put any others away. Sigh. Then when I want to try to put some away again I struggle with which ones to put away. The kiddos really do play with most of their toys. When I notice a toy hasn't been played with in a while then I toss it in the donation bin and away it goes. So, when it came time to figure out which toys to put away I couldn't make up my mind.

Then Christmas happened. My parents were very generous this year and gave L a beautiful (large) doll house and the boys got a train table. Both great presents but I joked that they must be getting the hubby and I a house addition for Christmas. Alas, no house addition was unwrapped and once the toys were put into our tiny basement toy room which also serves as a TV room and the home of my new treadmill (oooo, I'll have to blog about that soon.....), there was barely any room to walk. And then it happened. I went downstairs after the kids had been playing and I found toys everywhere. It took forever to clean up and I thought to myself, "we waste so much time cleaning up toys!". So, I came up with a plan.

I packed away all the toys. Literally. I put them all in storage bins and baskets (thank you Superstore for the coupon for free bins this week!) and I put them in the front of our crawlspace. Every Sunday the kids get to go in and pick two things they would like to play with that week. The rest stays in the crawlspace. Every Sunday the kids can exchange their toys for different ones if they like. We kept out the train table, doll house, books and teddy bears and a few odds and ends like some trucks for T and some Barbie dolls for L but it all fits in a few little fabric bins we can fit in our little cube self. The rest is put away. It feels SOOOO good. The house seems less cluttered, the kids don't miss most of the toys, and we spend way less time cleaning up. Now, lets see if we can really keep this up for the rest of the year ;)