My Toy Story

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My version of Toy Story goes like this:

• Baby is born and there are a small amount of soft small toys in the home.


• Baby gets a little bigger and small soft toys are put away to make room for medium sized toys with few pieces.


• Mommy knows where every toy is and dutifully puts them back with their proper pieces in the correct location every night.


• Baby has first Christmas and number of medium sized toys increases as well as number of small parts in each toy.


• Mommy still knows where each toy and piece should call home.


• Baby has a few birthdays, a younger brother and more kids meals (with toys) and shaped chicken nuggets that he should be allowed to ingest due to FDA regulations.


• Mommy cannot find her keys or coffee, much less care about where the Little People bus driver, lid to the special color wonder marker and Henry's coal tender belong (still missing).

So that is where the plot currently is. Or WAS. Until I decided to take control of the toy clutter after Christmas.

We all know that somehow your home implodes like pop rocks and Coke after Christmas (Where did they get that toy? Did it walk into the house? It is an action figure...). Our living room and playroom became a huge dumping area for the toys.

Not the crummy stuff. Oh, I toss those "character building" Chic-fil-A books and/ or CDs immediately. Come on Chic-fil-A. That's only if I don't turn them back in for free ice cream. Did you know you could do that?

But medium sized decent toys. That have lots of pieces and are learning toys so you feel guilty about tossing them and your mother will ask where it is next time she visits. The toys were seeping (crawling, maybe?) into our whole house. I was stepping on train tracks/ Mr. Potato Head's angry eyes/ magnetic talking letters in the bathroom. My bathroom. The sanctuary.

Welcome 4 new bins from Tar-jay. All things like puzzles, cars, coloring books, medium sized toys were separated into equal amounts for each bin considering craft vs. play, older vs. younger, car vs. tractor, equal toys for each age, etc. Who am I kidding? I kind of tossed them all in there. (But I did try to spread it out a little because I have issues.)

Here is the spreading process:

Here is the trick: we only get ONE OUT A WEEK for the kids to play with! Who really needs 8 coloring books at once (besides an octopus)? The kids think it's like Christmas all over again. We could have just brought out all that old junk. I don't know why we spent tons of money on new junk. Maybe this is why.

We put one away tonight and brought a new one out. BIG party 'round these parts. Doesn't take much, I guess. Here are the other 3 stored properly (and clogging up our coat closet a bit) and patiently waiting for their turn.

So, that's what's working for me right now. I'm enjoying seeing the floor for the time being. Hopefully the system will last for a while if I can remember to (and have the strength to- those boogers are wedged in there!) change out the toys. And maybe the boys won't beg for certain toys that are "locked" away.

I don't want to have to get out my angry eyes.