Ah, the joys of cleaning the toy room...
You may be wondering how spoiled the kids are to have a whole room dedicated to their toys. Well, it happened by default. We live in an odd tri-level home with a 4th bedroom next to the family room on the lower level. There wasn't much else to do with the room. Plus the upstair bedrooms are really too small to hold furniture and toys. And the best part of having a toy room is that it keeps toys out of the rest of the house. Well in theory it's suppose to...
I should add that the toy room has a futon so it moonlights as a guest room. Our guests feel so much hospitality sleeping on a futon in a bright red, blue, orange, and green painted room with beheaded dolls and 643 Legos to step on in the middle of the night.
Back to cleaning this room. The kids are suppose to pick it up every evening. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. If you don't believe that time can stop, just yell "Kids, clean the toy room!" And then they go from moving at the speed of light to slower than a no legged sloth. Their little hands which can hold 4 cookies, a juice box, an ice cream cone and 2 cupcakes all at the same time are now only capable of picking up 1 toy. Which they hold for at least 3 minutes, contemplating where it belongs. We don't have a complicated system here either. Put in a bin or stack it on a shelf. It's so simple, I could teach a sea monkey to do it.
You may know this already but let me repeat it: Left to their own devices, toys breed. Like bunnies and closet hangers. I think this is to guarantee that I will always have something to trip over no matter how many toys I throw or give away. The girls' Barbies have a wardrobe to rival the Royal Family's. We have 4 used car lots of Hot Wheels cars. 643 Legos. The State of Indiana's entire children's library. Every Fisher Price Little People set known to man (okay, this one is my fault, I love them!). A zoo's worth of stuffed animals. More baby dolls than my grandmother had children (she had 14 by the way). In other words, a lot of frickin' toys!
The funny thing is that Greg and I have probably bought 10 of these toys. The kids are the only grandchildren on both sides of the family. With 7 aunts and uncles and countless great aunts and uncles. And if you haven't noticed there are 5 kids, 2 of which are twins. Which means we often given 2 of the same toy for Em and Ally, so not to cause fights. Ha! We could have 10 of the same toy and they would still argue over one. "That one has the melted plastic handle and the torn sticker, she has it and I want it!" We take two vehicles when we open Christmas presents at my in-law's house. Seriously...
So about once a month, I do a toy room clean up binge. I shut the kids out of the room and pile all the toys into the middle of the floor. First retrieving toys from under the futon, behind the shelves, out of the light fixture, and removing the 6 toys out of the storage bins. Which are only there accidentally because they fell in during the last Barbie versus Little People war with elaborate Lego towers.
My strategy is to sort, regroup, and put or throw away. I'm ruthless when it comes to the throw away pile: anything chewed, torn, missing pieces, or from McDonalds is gone. Besides like I said above, the toys will reproduce themselves overnight to make up for their missing comrades.
One full trash bag and an hour later, the toy room was decent this morning. The Legos were in the green bin, My Little Ponies in red, cars in yellow, the books stacked neatly on the shelf. And then I let the kids back in.
Oh well, there's always next month. *sigh*
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