I don’t know about you, but I would say the hardest part of cleaning up has always been the toys! If I would get one room clean, and return in a few moments, the kids would have dragged toys back into it again. My proud accomplishment over in a few moments.
Recently when we visited some friends of ours we noticed they had a rule in their house. “Toys remain in the bedroom or the playroom” My first reaction was, “For real?” I did not see how it was possible to have that rule. I saw how all night, not only did their children abide by the rule, but my daughters had no problem with it. I told Ben this was a novel idea we had to try!
The next day we explained the rules to Emily and Anna, and moved all toys into their room. In our home they do not have a play room, but their shared bedroom is twice the size of an average child’s bedroom, so their is plenty of play room. Plus the room is right by the living room, so they are never too far away. It has taken reminding them as they began to drag things into the living room, but not with much struggle. As soon as we remind them of the rule, they quickly take everything back into the room.
This has helped in so many ways in keeping the home in order. First, the bedroom/playroom may be a mess, but every other area of your home can be tidy, and neat. It is great for those unexpected guests because you can simply shut the door to their room. It makes for easier clean up of their toys. They are not strewn all over the house at clean up time; you only have one area to clean. Using the timer technique throughout the day is even easier when all the toys are in their room. I can give them just one area of their room to clean up, instead of one overwhelming room. It cuts down tremendously on the chaos in the house, which cuts down on my frustration of trying to maintain the house.
Here are a few other tips on keeping the toys under control:
1) If they have so many toys you do not know what to do, it may be clean out time. Weed out the things they have outgrown, or don’t play with. If you find games and toys that do not have all their pieces and are no longer fully functional, toss them.
2) You may leave a mess in their room for a day or so, as you can now close the door on it, but don’t leave the mess for too long. (We try to do one thorough clean up at the end of the day)
3) Once you have dejunked the toys, you can rotate them. Create a plastic container and put some away, in a month or two pull them out and exchange them for some they are now bored with. It will feel like getting new things to them, and helps to cut down on the chaos.
4) Keep art and crafts supplies well out of reach. Supervise messy or creative play in an area where clean up is easy.
I constantly work on “purging” the unwanted toys. Now that my youngest daughter is almost 28 months old and we know we are not having any more babies, I have started donating and/or selling the baby toys. We have the same problem with the toys drifts! 😉 They have a Play Doh activity drawer in the kitchen and a coloring books and crayons drawer in the den. I am trying to slowly move all of our toys down into the bonus room off our kitchen where our home office is. I like the idea of rotating them, too! It also helps, I think, when you have two kids of the same gender.
I constantly work on “purging” the unwanted toys. Now that my youngest daughter is almost 28 months old and we know we are not having any more babies, I have started donating and/or selling the baby toys. We have the same problem with the toy drifts! 😉 They have a Play Doh activity drawer in the kitchen and a coloring books and crayons drawer in the den. I am trying to slowly move all of our toys down into the bonus room off our kitchen where our home office is. I like the idea of rotating them, too! It also helps, I think, when you have two kids of the same gender.