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 ;)

The tea party, cookies, and cake set all have their own bins.

 

The little people are all grouped according to what set they belong to.

All the toys tucked away in the crawl space.

Purge 2013: Part 2

I have now tackled and conquered the kids bedroom closets.  Oh my, it feels very good.  I took out all the clothes that no longer fit T and packed them away for T2.  I decided to try something new.  Instead of putting the clothes in boxes marked 0-12 months or 12-24 months I decided to instead put the clothes in boxes marked sleepers, shirts and pants.  This way when I dig though the pile of pants to find all the 6-12 month pants I know that once I reach a pair that is 18 months I don't have to dig any further.  Does that make sense?  I think this will work much better than sorting through boxes of assorted clothing items.  In addition to this, I also sorted all the clothes that are too small on L and T2 and packed them away in boxes to bring to the consignment store.  I am quickly realizing that three kids can get a bit expensive so I am going to try and make some of my money back from their clothing and baby items that T2 is quickly growing out of.  It feels so good to know that once T2 is done with something I can get it out of my house rather than having to store it for an indefinite amount of time.  That is the ultimate purge :)

So, here's a little sneak at the closet organizing.  I could not bring myself to take pics of what they looked like before I cleaned them so you will have to just take me at my word when I tell you that this look WAY better.

First is L and T's closet.  I must admit that it looks pretty tidy because most of their clothes are in the dirty laundry basket.


Summer clothes are packed away in a box.  Also, each of the kids have a Memory Box that we put special things in that we think they will want to have one day when they are all grown up.


Next is T2's closet.  This little boy has a lot of clothes.



I know that I already posted about the basement but I didn't get good "after" pics.  So, here is before...


.... and here is after.

Another before.....

 

..... and after :)



The Great Purge of 2013

I will admit that I am a bit of an organization addict.  When our house is organized and tidy I feel at peace.  Well, with three kids I am finding that it is getting very cluttered around here.  Christmas is right around the corner and with our wonderfully generous families living so close that means more toys, books, games, and clothes will be entering our home in about a month and a half.  So, I have decided that this year, before I put up any Christmas decorations, I am going to do a big household purge.  I am getting rid of anything and everything that has not been used in the last few months and I am organizing everything that is staying.  Is it sick that I am SOOOO looking forward to doing this and consider it really fun??

So, I started this epic journey on Friday with our basement.  Because we live in a split level house we only have half a basement and it is divided into two parts: the playroom and the laundry/storage room.  I started with the playroom (mostly because I am actually a little afraid of the storage room).  It was the perfect time since the playroom was an absolute disaster.  L helped me sort though the toys and decided what to keep and what to give away.  I must say that I am very proud of the way she does not hang onto things.  She was more than willing to part with toys she hasn't played with in a while.  In fact, she was so good at it that I had to convince her to keep a few things.  That kid has such an amazing heart to share her things with kids who don't have toys or clothing (more on that in another post).  So, after an entire day of cleaning, here is the final outcome.


Before

After

Under the stairs closet before



After :)

So the basement cleaning led to cleaning the kitchen office area.  This area seems to always be a disaster since we just dump stuff on the desk.  Hopefully I have now created a space for things that normally just sit all over the place.

Before.....

 

.....and after :)

So, that was the first installment of the great purge week.  Oh, ya, did I mention that I'm going to attempt to do all of this in a week :)  So excited! 

The Big Reveal - The Kiddo's New Bedroom

 
 
I am thrilled to say that the kids' bedroom is FINALLY finished!  Woooo, hoooo!  The hold up has been their bedding.  I've been looking at the material for their duvet covers for months and months and just never had the energy to do it.  Thankfully, I have some German stubbornness in me and this week I decided that no matter how tired I am or how sore my back is (that may be another post in the near future) I was going to get them done this week.  And, I did it!  So, here's their new room.

 

 

I wanted to make a room that was girly yet masculine enough for a little boy as well.  Somewhere along the way I got my mind stuck on the kids having chevron duvet covers.  I could not find what I had in mind anywhere and when I found something close to what I wanted it was WAY out of my price range.  So, after ranting on Facebook about it, a friend of mine sent me a link to making your own chevron duvet cover.  Since the kids beds are single beds and I wanted the print to be quite large the quilts were actually pretty easy to make.  A little time consuming but easy.

The room is SUPER small so I had to get creative to fit both kids plus their clothes into this one little room.  I found some awesome plastic bins at Wal-Mart that slide nicely under the bottom bunk.  We use one for T's diapers and the other two are for dirt clothes since there is no room in the closet for hampers.

That brings me to the closet.  It is also pretty small and there is no room for a dresser anywhere else in the room.  Again, had to get creative.  I was planning on buying a closet organizer but then I found cube shelves on sale at Home Depot.  They fit PERFECTLY into the closet without an inch to spare.  Half of the cubes are for L and half are for T.  We already had the upper shelves and closet bar in that closet so half become L's and half became T's.  Each cube holds a different article of clothing (ie, t-shirts in one, long sleeves in one, pants in one, shorts in one, etc....).  Underwear and socks go in baskets on top of the shelves for now.

L loves books and we have a lot, so yet another cube shelf is out in the room to hold books as well as to be the shelf for the CD player and basket containing CD's, Bible, and T's soothers (yes, he still has soothers).

Then on the wall I wanted each kid to have some space of their own.  So, L's space has some old pics from my room when I was a little girl as well as a painting that our pastor's wife painted for me when I was born.  T's space has a hockey picture from his aunt and uncle and some cars.  I still need to get a letter T for his wall space.

 

 

So, that is the kiddos' new room.  I think it turned out pretty cute and they sure do seem to love it :)

 

This was the kids art project during the winter.  I taped their initials onto canvas and let them paint (clearly I helped T).  Then when the paint was dry we took the tape off.  They turned out really well.

(Winter) Spring Cleaning

Ok, so, it has been a LONG time since I've posted anything on my blog.  Yikes.  I basically skipped writing anything during the winter months...... oh wait, it's still winter here!  Yesterday I was feeling so excited at seeing lots of grass in our yard and the melt seemed to really be gaining momentum.  Then, I woke up to snow everywhere and it is still snowing here at 3:30 in the afternoon.  So I figured I could cry (that was my instinct) or I could just make the best of it.  Thankfully I started my day off with a good workout and healthy breakfast so I had a positive attitude ;)  I've decided that I am going to do some spring cleaning while I wait for spring.  Every day I am going to tackle one room in the house and clean it, get rid of anything we don't use, fix anything that is broken and organize the heck out of it.  I've been wanting to do this for a while but I needed a little push.  I guess 5cm of snow in mid-April was that push.

So, today I tackled our en suite and bedroom.  I am embarrassed to say that I took out two kitchen sized garbage bags full of stuff we don't use, boxes left behind, and broken things out of our tiny little en suite.  Seriously, this room is SMALL!  I am amazed at how we can hoard things.  It feels sooooo good to get rid of all that stuff and know that the only things left in that room are things that we use on a regular basis.

Then I moved on to the top of our dressers and my night table.  Those things were not too bad but I was too afraid of my husbands night table to even go near it.  Seriously, I will not even post a picture because it is so disgusting.  The two drawers are overflowing with everything from books to scrap paper to batteries to...... well, I'm not sure what most of it even is.  Guess what he's doing tonight ;)  Hopefully there is a hockey game on the radio that he can listen to because I think he may be there all evening.

Tomorrow is a busy day so I don't think any cleaning/organizing will get done but I think I may tackle the linen closet and the kids bedroom closets the next day.  Wish me luck!