Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Toy Clean Up

Friday night I decided to take control of the house. From the clothes, the toys, the chaos. I started with the girls clothes. I tossed every piece of clothing in their rooms into the middle of their floors and did a major weeding. It felt good. And now there are only clothes for the season, that they can wear to school, available for choosing. That created 3 big bags for good will, plus bins for the new baby niece and fall bins for both girls.

Saturday we were gone all day having fun. Sunday morning we continued the clean house routine. Doug called me "a machine". We tossed every single toy, in the entire house in the middle of the office - toys from the basement, attic, rooms, etc.
This is where we started. Each girl started their own pile of things they needed to keep. And everything else got in a box - Goodwill, Trash, Sell/Give.

We are almost done here. I was shocked that I was able to every piece of every toy back together in it's original state. Puzzle pieces, Blue's Clues, Farms, Dora stuff, etc. It felt good.
And our stuff "organized". It is all sitting in the dining room now. We are trying to figure out what to do with the "good" stuff - yard sale or just give it away or what. Some of it we will keep and rotate.

And there only the toys that are in this room are out. And the girls are actually playing more with their toys because they know where everything is and maybe are not as overwhelmed with how much there was!


I think this came from us doing the 40 day challenge and realizing we don't need 1/4 of what we have!

Ahhhhh.... which lasted until Tuesday and now the house has toys all over it again. But as soon as I hit post, I will straighten up because I know where everything goes :)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Awesome job tackling ALL that!!! I so need to do that too. I have been thinking about it for a while - just didn't think about doing it THAT way! Brilliant - b/c they got to help too!

Jessica said...

Doug is right--you are a machine! Glad you were able to reclaim the house, even if only for a few minutes. And even though toys are everywhere again, at least you know they will fit back into their proper place!

And one more thing? Moooooo...

Cheri (aka "The Mom Lady") said...

Your first photo looked like the typical Christmas morning in any American household with children! :) Where was the tree???

We used to have "possession wars" with our three kids too. Moving as often as we did in the Oil Patch, we had a scheduled clean out - when we were transferred! Once I tried to squirrel away some of the toys into the packing paper as I unpacked, thinking I'd locked the excess forever in the trash to be picked up by the movers. The boys would ask, "Where is so-and-so?" to which I'd reply, "It must have gotten lost in the move" lying through my teeth. Well, I was caught because a week after the movers picked up the boxes, they showed up at my door with a couple boxes full of toys they'd "found going through your boxes before we incinerated them".

Busted...SO busted...

Cheri (aka "The Mom Lady") said...

Another thing we used to do when the kids were a bit older and getting allowance was to do a sweep each night and toys that were left out were put in "lock-up" where they had to buy them out at 10 or 25 cents each. It was somewhat useful - those that were not "bailed" were permanently removed from the house (thrown out or given away).

By the way, I should add that when the movers came back with the boxes of toys (previous comment), the boys were standing right there with me at the door. Kind of an important detail in my "being debased as a parent" scenario. No one of my better moments for sure.

Erin said...

Wow, that was amazing! I know how great it feels to declutter and reclaim your space. We do that everytime we move at a minimum. Sometimes I do it just to feel like I have control over something. I'm silly like that.

Amy said...

Cleaning machine you are!!! WOW! Great job girl!

Want to come clean out our kid's toy boxes? I used to be really good...but we just keep buying more bins...make it stop!