A little experiment

If you know me, you will know that I talk a lot about ideas on organizing our home. I do not like clutter. Have I mastered this? No way. Are we getting closer? You betcha.

Because I am not task oriented, I went to my dear hubby. He is all about projects and getting them done so he was naturally my best teammate in helping me with my hot button: toys on the floor. No matter how many times a day I ask the children to clean up, there is always remnants of their imaginative play. Play kitchen mixed with dress-up scattered with farm toys littered with books, puzzles, trucks, tractors, doll house....aaaAAAhhhHHH! It's all too. much. stuff.

So, we took out the play kitchen and put the dishes in a bin, dress-up had its own bin, dollhouse was given away (they weren't playing with it) and farm toys were put in its own bag. In a nutshell, each toy had its place. Baskets held trucks, tractors and train sets while plastic bins kept like items neatly together. But it still was too much.

A while ago, my sister was telling me about a program she watched about the people of Denmark, I think, and how they paid outrages taxes but were still able to pay cash for their homes. They were definitely living the Dave Ramsey lifestyle. Not using credit and owning very little. Now I'm not going to rant (I've done that before) about how we consume way too much. Instead, I want to share how we are trying to show our kids they don't need all these stinkin' toys.

My kids' room has been a sore spot with me for some time. I'll get around to getting rid of toys at Christmas and near birthdays, but it's never quite enough. Once the toys get organized, I stop there because I'm satisfied with the end result of the toys being put away properly. Until five minutes later, when they are pulled out again and all over the place.

Okay, back to our experiment. Despite the organized bins and baskets, I still found it wasn't enough to keep the chaos down. So, we brought all their toys into the front room and allowed them to pick out only a few toys each to play with and we bagged the rest. We're talking bare minimum. The girls have one doll each and a stuffed animal. Let me just say that was a HUGE step for them. They have a ton of stuffed animals and all are very special. Micah has a few trucks and two stuffed animals.

That's it for their own personal toys. Now, we still have play sets that belong in bins but they are out of reach so I control when they come down and make sure they are picked up when they are done. It's really hard to appreciate this huge step for us without seeing before and after, but let me tell ya, it's a whole lot nicer around here in the area of clutter.

If toy clutter is your hot button, give this a try. And if you aren't a task-oriented kind of gal, get someone who can help. Believe me, you will need their voice of reason when you find yourself saying, "oh, maybe they can keep this one..." I've been there, done that because once the toys got organized, I would stop and rethink the idea of downsizing. Now that we've succeeded, it feels great.

For great organizing tips and simple living, visit my favorite blog: www.simplemom.net