My husband had the great insight to move some of the significant toys to the kids rooms. Now, when I was growing up my sisters and my toys were mostly in our room, save for a few that lived in our basement closet. But I don't know why it never occurred to me that our kids could have toys in their rooms and...it would mean less crap on the main floor of my house.
Apparently if you take the same amount of toys and spread them throughout the house, it looks like a bunch of smaller messes and seems so much more doable than if all the toys were dumped in one spot.
What do you other moms do?
- Do you keep all toys on the main floor of your house right in the middle of the action?
- Do your kids keep stuff in their rooms and therefore spend lots of time upstairs away from where you are cooking dinner?
- Do you have one of those mythical playrooms to where all toys are banished and you never have to look at them?
8 comments:
We keep toys on the main level and in the bedroom. We play in both areas and a couple times a day I pick up the toys. I try to switch out toys from another box in the basement to keep things new and fresh. My personal rule is whatever comes through the front door has to be functional to our small space living. Sounds like your plan will work for your kiddos.
Don't I wish for they mythical playroom to store toys in. LOL No, we go through phases, W.W. will bring a selection of toys out of his room and they will live in the living room for a week or so. Then I'll clean house and move everything back to his room. Then he'll decide what he wants to bring out the following week to play with. The only thing I can say about it is that it at least revolves the toys we see in the living room. ;)
We have one bedroom that's larger than the others. So that room has bunk beds and a crib in it, and it also has two large shelf units and a big tub, all for toys. It's the "baby playroom" as well as being a bedroom, and we have it gated and extra-childproofed in there. Then, the bigger-kid toys that have to be kept away from the babies, we keep those in the bigger kids' bedrooms.
Oh, and I should say that the kids often bring toys out during the day into the living room, but that everything gets cleared out of the main rooms before bedtime (the older kids do this clearing as part of their pre-dinner routine), so Paul and I don't have to look at it in the evenings.
With birthday and Christmas both around the corner, we are working on the toy issue too. Getting rid of a LOT, and tyring to find ways to make the house look less overrun by brightly colored plastic. I would move more to her room, but she still has a problem with destroying her room on a nightly basis, so the room is an empty box with only a bed. Sigh.
Sigh... this is something we're dealing with right now as well. We made one of the extra bedrooms upstairs into a playroom which has helped out a lot, but I still have toys in a corner of the kitchen and also in the living room since that is where we are most of the time. My solution for the living room is going to be adding a train table with trundles to the room. Whatever toys do not fit into the two trundles under the table will have to find somewhere else to be besides my living room. I also have about 20 of those fun cloth square bins from target that are easy to throw toys in and tuck in a closet or in a corner when people are coming over... plus they have so many colors that I've been able to get them to match all the rooms! I also use these in the car too since it's nice to have some small toys in there to keep him happy while we're driving from place to place
I need to get with it and have a toy reorganization of my own. We seem to have toys scattered from one end of the house to the other. We have a huge Lego table in the living room that's overrun with toys. A big basket in the playroom that's overrun with toys. And there's a big toybin in his bedroom which is overrun with toys too. I'd love to see them consolidated in one spot, but Bryce follows me around the house to play, so pretty much the toys follow me around too. :)
I say "Welcome to the toybox...don't trip". They won't be around forever and before you know it, they will be put away for good. That is how I like to justify the massive piles we have :)
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