Friday, September 17, 2010

Continuing Effort to Declutter

It's official. The kids have too many toys. And with birthdays and Christmas fast approaching, I need to do something to remedy the situation ASAP! With one child in preschool this morning, I took the opportunity to tackle the toy corner. My problem is a combination of too many toys, and too many random parts that don't really go to any particular toy, and too many wood puzzles, which the boys never play with. They just get dumped. I'm the only one who has put together a wood puzzle in the past 12 months. Here's what I was dealing with this morning.



The weight of the books on the bookshelf had collapsed the top shelf. My kids idea of putting toys away is to stand at the far side of the room and heave toys with all of their might in the general direction of the toy shelves. In this kind of chaos they can't find anything they want to play with, and sit around board while surrounded by toys. And this is only about 1/3 of all of the toys we own. With a plethora of loving and generous grandparents and great grandparents, these children will never want for something new to play with. But with a 900 sq ft apartment and 5 peoples things to store, I have to let some things go. Two hours, 1 trash bag, and 2 good will boxes later and we have this:

I still need to tackle the other 2/3 of our toys that are waiting rotation in the basement, but this makes such a huge difference in the livability of our living room. I love before/after photos and posts. What have you been working on?

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