Toy glut

With the onset of Christmas, I anticipate a few more new toys for the boys, from us and from relatives. In preparation, in addition to just being sick of having too much mess around the house, I've organized and put away possibly 1/2 of Tobey and Eli's toys.

I started by getting 3 big plastic organizing bins from Target. I actually bought them for organizing the kids' clothes we have (and still will use them for clothes) but while sitting in the house, they got used by Tobey to "organize" the toys. Tobey and Eli put every loose toy in the 3 bins. It was pretty amazing to see them all in the same place at once.

Then, remembering a previous episode of Supernanny, I decided to reduce our toy collection from 3 bins to 1 bin. Supernanny had 3 boys with way too many toys (and therefore never took care of them) to pick 10 toys each. So I had Tobey pick toys that could fit into 1 bin (I took over the role of choosing toys for Eli). I gave a couple of freebies like the big Legos that both he and Eli can play with, the globe and Eli's Discovery ball. And of course all the books can stay (or be sorted through at some other time).

At first Tobey wasn't very discriminating, wanting to put all the toys he saw into the keep box. But once we got to the 3rd bin and he wanted to keep some toys that wouldn't fit, he had to start choosing which toy to take out. Of course he started choosing Eli's toys to take out (tricksy!) but since that wasn't allowed he had to make some choices. He did well though, not complaining that he wanted more than 1 bin. I mean, goodness, one bin is pretty big! One choice that he made that I was surprised by was putting away his tool set. I had to exercise self control not to "control" Tobey with a leading question ("Are you sssuuuuure you want to put away your tools?") just because I thought the toys were cool and just let him make and live by his own decisions.

So finally this morning I'm in super organizing mode. Because The Journey is over and I can turn my attention back to the mess that is our house, I've organized the "put away" toys into mongo Ziploc bags I bought a long time ago (I knew they'd come in handy!): developmental/baby toys, softie toys and role playing/toddler toys. And thanks to an impulse purchase of a Costco sized box of freezer bags, I used them liberally to keep parts of toys together. I might even get to tackle the boxes of clothes that we have. (I can't wait to have the clothes in CLEAR bins so I can see what we have for Eli and what we don't.) Organizing and getting ready for travel: it will be a busy two days but I'll feel "cleaner" for having done it.

And so far, no complaining from the kids about the fewer toys. Proof that we just had too many out to begin with.