Purging

After spending 2 hours this afternoon coaching, threatening, and yelling at the kids to clean up their toys, I've decided I'm done.

I'm done with little random toys all over my house from one end to the other.  I'm done with trying to find space for all the toys.  I'm done with spending an hour and a half every week organizing toys.

That's right, I watermarked that mess.  Just so everyone would be clear that it belongs to me.  Because that's important.  *Sarcasm implied* 

It's time to purge.  Be afraid, little toys.  Be very afraid.

This weekend, I am going to send the kidlets off to play with cousins or relatives of some sort (I haven't decided who to beg bribe threaten nicely ask yet) so I can spend the day purging toys to give to Goodwill.  If it isn't educational, imaginative, or doesn't go with a set of toys the kids love, it's gone.  No more worrying about offending a well-meaning relative when they come to visit and that push-the-buttons-and-watch-me-light-up toy is gone.  I don't care anymore.  I cleaned off a shelf in my bedroom closet which will be used to store about half of the remaining toys.  And, FYI...that shelf isn't as big as you think it is...

But wait, why stop there?  If I'm going to purge the toys, why not keep going?  I decided to make a plan and of course, that requires that I blog about it.  Amiright?  So here is my official purge list:

Kids' coats and winter gear-No child needs 4 winter coats and 18 pairs of mittens.  It seems that the more mittens they have, the more they lose them.  The ones I do keep will have yarn sewn to each mitten to connect the pair so it threads between the sleeves of the coat.  Presto! No more lost mittens.

Hubby's farm gloves-seriously...three drawers stuffed full of ratty old gloves that he hasn't touched since we got married?  No.  Just no.

Dishes-There are dishes in my kitchen that I have never used.

Blankets-I swear they multiply when I'm not looking!

Bathtub toys and kids' towels-They play with the same 2 toys every time they get in the bathtub and I wash towels often enough that the bottom half of the stack hasn't been touched in over a year.  

My clothes-I'm hoping/planning/working on losing weight so I have a lot of clothes in limbo.  Seriously though, if I don't love it, it's gone.  IF I lose enough weight to fit back into the clothes I wore before getting pregnant with Princess, I will buy myself new ones.

Kids' clothes-They do not need 20 shirts apiece.  I do have a washing machine, and I wash their clothes weekly.  10 shirts is the maximum they need.  The same goes for pants.

Kids' shoes-Going on the same theme as the clothes, they simply don't need 12 pairs of shoes apiece.

Books and movies-I'm having a hard time fitting them all on their shelves so it's definitely time for a purge there as well.  Most of them, I can get at the local library so I don't need my own copy.

Thanks so much for visiting Supermommy!...Or Not.  I'd love for you to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!

31 Days-Organizing Toys

It doesn't take much for kids' toys to get out of control.  I've always wished I had a playroom so I could just shut the door and not look at the mess, but because our house is small, our "playroom" is a corner of the living room.  It has to be well organized or the toys take over our whole living area.

When Princess first started accumulating toys, I threw them all in one container.  I had my eye on a toy box thinking that would be the easiest way to keep them picked up, but I soon realized that a toy box was not the best solution as toys get jumbled together and broken easily, not to mention that you can never find the one you're looking for.

The solution is to organize toys into separate bins.  For bigger toys without a lot of pieces, I store them directly on the shelf, but sets go into a canvas bin or bucket.  This makes it much easier for the kids to clean up after themselves.  I've seen some people label their bins with a picture of the type of toy that goes into it,but nothing sticks really well to the canvas bins so I haven't done that.  If you're storing yours in plastic bins, I would definitely recommend that as kids are so visual.

This shelf works perfectly for toys!  If you look closely, you can see that Little Man's hotwheels collection is stored on the bottom shelf in a pink ice cream pail.  Poor boy.

A close-up of several of the bins.  The red one holds miscellaneous toys and the blue one holds My Little Ponies

Here are a few more tips I use to control the toy chaos:

1. If the toys don't fit in their designated bins or area, it's time to say goodbye to a few!  When we get to that point, first I throw out anything that's broken, then I make a pile of toys that I don't mind getting rid of and have the kids pick a certain number of them to give to kids who don't have any toys (aka Goodwill).  This gets the kids involved and teaches them about generosity.

2. Divide the toys in half and put half of them in storage.  Every few months or when it looks like the kids are losing interest in the toys that are out, switch them for the ones that are in storage. Every time we make the switch, it's like Christmas at my house!

3. Ask relatives to go in on one big gift for all your kids instead of giving each child little things.  Or, if your children are still young enough not to notice, ask them to just buy one small gift for each child to unwrap and put the rest of the money they would have spent on a gift into the child's savings account.  


Update: Since I wrote this post, I've gotten these canvas bins which help make the toy shelf neater and stores the toys better.  The best part?  The cheapest I've seen them in stores was $6 apiece and the ones I found on Amazon are good quality and were less than $5 apiece!  

Want to see a complete list of the posts in the 31 Days to Simplify Your Life series?  Click here. 
  


Thanks so much for visiting Supermommy!...Or Not.  Please take a moment to "like" me on facebook"!

My House is Being Taken Over By Toys!

As I desperately tried to cram Princess's beanie babies, teddy bears, and other stuffed animals into the medium sized bin I'd long ago allocated for stuffed animals, a thought crossed my mind-I needed to go shopping for bigger storage containers. The stuffed animals were overflowing into the doll bin which was overflowing into the box of board books which was overflowing onto the toys shelves which were overflowing onto the floor of my living room. You get the picture.

How did we get so many toys? It's my personal theory that toys secretly procreate in the dark of night, multiplying their numbers so sneakily that you don't even notice it happening until one day you realize that your whole house has been turned into a giant playroom. Of course, the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even I am guilty of keeping Princess entertained with an endless supply of new toys to play with. My big pitfall is thrift store and garage sale shopping. My experience usually goes something like this:
"Look at the practically brand new, adorable toy that reminds me of my own childhood and gives me warm, fuzzy feelings inside! And look, it's only 50 cents!! I must buy it for my own child so she too can experience childhood to its fullest!"
I get home and hold my breath as I hand the latest acqusition over to Princess, anticipating shrieks of joy. She takes it from me, examines it briefly, and drops it to the floor so she can play with the the empty lotion bottle I forgot to throw away earlier.


As I contemplated what type of storage bins I could find that would contain the evergrowing population of Princess's toys, the solution hit me. The answer was to make the toys fit into the space we already had. I grabbed a garbage bag and started digging through the stuffed animals. I still haven't figured out why stuffed animals are such a popular gift to give children when I don't know a single child who actually plays with them. Occasionally, Princess will go through the bin and look at each one before wandering off to play with something else, but that is the extent of her interaction with her stuffed animals. So, it was relatively easy to downsize those. Then I started in on the rest of her toys. That was a little more difficult because I didn't want to get rid of toys that were gifts from relatives, but I managed to fill the garbage bag and off it went to Goodwill.



My new worry is that I'm due to have our second child next month and it's a boy. Which means a whole new set of toys geared for boys. I'm not one of those people who insist on toys being gender specific, but I don't think my little farm boy is going to want to play with dolls and other girly stuff ALL the time. He's probably going to want tractors and cars and the relatives will be more than happy to supply him with plenty of those. Another child also means twice as many birthday and Christmas presents for me to find space for. I'm hoping to convince relatives that, instead of giving a bunch of smaller stuff to each child, they can give one bigger gift to both the kids. But we'll see...



Unsolicited Advice: I recently remembered one of my favorite things to play with when I was a kid and decided to recreate it for Princess. When my parents moved back to Minnesota from Florida, my mom filled a cake pan with white sand from the beach. She didn't take it out very often so it was a special treat to get to play with it and it was perfect for when we were stuck inside all winter. Not having access to beach sand, I decided to use white rice to fill my cake pan. You could also use dry beans, oatmeal, gravel, etc.

Didn't We Used to be Friends?

Okay, so it's been a while since I've updated my blog. During the time I've been absent, Princess has turned two and I've entered my third trimester of pregnancy.

For Princess's birthday party, we had a family gathering consisting of Hubby's parents, one set of grandparents, two siblings and their families and my parents, one set of grandparents, four siblings and their families. Our smallish family gathering amounted to 30 people in my big, but not huge living room. If somebody turned to talk to someone on their left, that meant that everyone turned to talk to the person on their left. The eight children under the age of 5 at the party spent most of their time in Princess's room playing which was good because there really wasn't any space for them to play in the living room. It was a lot of fun, but completely exhausting especially since I was 6 months pregnant.

After the party, I surveyed the (large) corner of the living room which has been overrun by Princess's toys, the coffee table which has four more boxes of toys in it, and the closet in Princess's room which is full of toys as well. I'm still trying to figure out how in the world her toys multiplied so fast. When she was an infant, all of her toys fit in an ice cream bucket. Then before she turned one, she took over the bottom shelf of the coffee table. Sometime before she got to 18 months, I had to give her toys a complete corner of the living room in addition to the coffee table. Now she has so many toys that I rotate them, storing some in her bedroom closet and taking them out when she gets bored with the ones she has. Don't accuse me of indulging her though. One time not that long ago, I went through and counted the toys I had actually purchased for Princess and came up with a figure less than 15.

Now that I'm in my third trimester, I find Hubby to actually be likeable again. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm carrying a boy this time or something, but when I was pregnant with Princess, I remember liking my husband the whole time. This time was different, much to Hubby's dismay. I can almost pinpoint the day I got pregnant because it's the day I started to STRONGLY dislike poor Hubby for absolutely no reason and for no fault of his. I loved him, but I just didn't like him much. I knew I was being unreasonable, but he couldn't do anything right no matter how hard he tried. In my second trimester, I began to tolerate him. Not that I liked him that much, but I was no longer so antagonistic (he may disagree with this statement somewhat). Now that I'm in my third trimester, I like the guy again.

The weird thing is that my sister, who is due 2 weeks before I am (and had a baby 6 weeks before I did last time), has felt the same way during her pregnancy. Maybe our husbands should have formed a defensive club and called it "Hormones Kill."