Doug and I spent all day yesterday cleaning out Michael's play room and room. I've done it before. It seems like it is a yearly project. And by out I mean out. We got rid of toys that haven't been played with in years, and his books are now organized and many are in boxes to be donated. The logic is this, in a month, he is going to get a whole new crop of toys, and I couldn't deal with the crap anymore. There was literally crap, wall to wall, in this house.
We made four piles, keep, donate, sell at the consignment store, pitch. The funniest was I wanted to pitch everything. And Doug was all, "well, I don't know." And I'm like "throw it out!!!!!" "We will be here for hours if you are going to hem and haw over every single action figure and plastic dinosaur. Let's get a move on here."
This was about halfway. It got much worse before it got better.
Michael was at religious school while this was going on, and while at first he was upset at this idea that some of his toys were going away, when he started looking threw his toys bins, he was amazed at the amount of toys he hadn't seen in years because they were buried at the bottom of a toy bin somewhere. He spent the rest of the day happily playing in his play room, not complaing that he couldn't find anything.
We have a new rule in this house. When you are done playing, things get put away. If they don't get put away, they get thrown out. Because I'm not spending hours of my life cleaning toy rooms out anymore. I give this rule a week before it is no longer enforceable, but I'm happier with a clean play room.
If I could just keep the toys out of my living room.
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And in case you are interested, my favorite thing I have written this year is, Everything I Need to Know In Life I Learned From Kindergarten Soccer.
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We spent Sunday doing the same thing!
We need to cull the toys on our house as well.
We have a late November birthday, Hannukah and Christmas all right in a row, which results in an overwhelming amount of gifts for the small child, and a frantic need on my part to PURGE! I totally get your impulse to just throw! it! out! NOW! because that’s what I do. Ah, the holidays.
I’ve been stealth-decluttering my son’s toys for about two weeks now. He hasn’t noticed yet. And if you figure out how to keep the toys out of the living room let me know!