Toy Situation

There are too many toys in this house! There are toys in the living room:

There are toys crowding in the Pixie's bedroom:

There are toys overflowing the closet:

The Punk's room is the worst. It looks like the attack of the killer toys in here:

So I made a plan. My plan has a list of 10 areas in my home yet to be downsized and organized. Top of the list is the kid's bedrooms. My priority is reducing the toy hoard to a manageable lump, and thus simplifying my girls' childhoods. They'll be able to focus better on fewer toys, and toys with more open-ended play value.

First I chucked all the living room toys into a laundry basket and removed it to the Punk's room. Then I vacuumed and felt fantastic about it.

Notice that I've been keeping the kitchen clean!

At 10:50 I started with the Pixie's bedroom. By 11:00 her room looked like this, and I filled the mop bucket for the next task:

By 11:15 the floor was drying. It took a little extra time to clean the floor because I had to scrub the crayon off using a cleaning eraser. I put a couple pieces of furniture back into place. Break time.

How did I clean her room so fast? My secret is my super-powered BROOM. Yup, I just swept everything from one room to the other. So now the Punk's room looks like this:

Punk's room "before"

11:20 Time to procrastinate. Phone call from Husband. I adore this man. You know what he did on his day off? He cleaned [his half of] the bedroom! It no longer looks like one of us is a hoarder. There is even room on the floor for the guitars. He topped his feat by doing his own laundry. I'm gonna be crowing about his major accomplishment for weeks.

Back to work! I moved the furniture away from the walls and swept and mopped under before moving it back. Then I sat in the middle of that enormous pile and sorted toys into three categories: Keep, Donate, Garbage. I kept my Super-Powered Broom next to me so that I could sweep the pile closer to me rather than un-assing my chair. It's lazy AND fast. That's my tip for today.

In the end, I had two boxes and a bag full of toys to donate, one huge sack of trash, and a single laundry basket of toys to keep.

Ta Da!!

Punk's room "after"

The toybox is, quite literally, empty. The Pixie started raving about the clean-ness long before I had finished the job and it motivated me to be very ruthless when getting rid of toys. I kept the Pixie's easel, and all of the Punk's chewies and cat tails. Books were seriously pared down to make room for new ones that we expect at Christmas. They each got to keep their "Nana" bears, their favorite babies, and all of the food and cooking related toys. Art and school supplies are located elsewhere. The Pixie has her dollhouse and bucketful of dinosaurs.

Pixie's room "after"

By 12:50 I was completely finished. By 1:05 I sat down to blog with a glass of cold tea and a cauliflower melt sandwich.

Now, I feel like I've accomplished a lot! I'm gonna knit a little, and dream about the nightgown I plan to make for the Punk.