There is a place for most everything in their rooms. But for some reason unknown to me, they prefer to take their toys and bring them out in the main living areas and play with them there. At the end of the night, we usually do a quick clean up which means tossing the toys in one of the five various plastic totes in the room.
After 4-6 weeks, the bins are overflowing and I can't take it anymore. Dolls and robots are perched everywhere because we are out of room in the totes. When I can't take it any longer, I gather all of the bins and extra toys around the house and dump them in a pile in Ben's room. Emily's room is smaller, but we gave her the one with the walk in closet. So, Ben's room it is. I tell them "It's time to get organized." And after explaining what that means to Ben, we start at it.
Emily did not want me to take a picture of the mess.
But it looks something like this.
I make the kids help me put everything away.
"Ben, put this in the super hero bin."
"Emily, all the doll clothes in the little suitcase."
And The Captain (me) barks out orders for a few hours and everything is put away.
Except yesterday, five minutes in, Emily started to get another fever. And Ben, said, "this is boring" and walked out. Truth be told, he's not that great of a helper when it comes to putting away toys. Emily is the helper. So with my first mate on the bed with a fever and our deck hand out watching Scooby Do, I tackled the entire pile by myself.
I had to stop to feed Ben, clean up Noah (and me) after he decided to explode in his diaper and clean up Emily, the sheets, and me after she puked everywhere. It took me the entire day. Literally, I didn't finish until 4:00, but it looked like this when I was done.
David come home and didn't even have to ask what I did today.Ben said, "Wow, it looks so pretty." I know it won't last 4 hours today, but he's making a great effort to put things back in their spot. He says that he likes to be organized.
It's a start.
2 comments:
Wow, it looks great!!!
I think it's wonderful that you are simply the way you are with enjoying this time. My sister with the three children, has always had a completely orderly house... Emma is just as meticulous as Barb is with putting everything away - I've been there when I tried to help and she, as a toddler, would correct me that I wasn't putting it away in the right place.
While I think it's nice to be orderly, it can make one nuts with small children around, lol. I say - do what you're doing. You're right, the time will pass really quickly. Now, when my nieces come to our house, they're always asking "where are all the toys?" to which I respond - GONE. Toys don't live here anymore. (though in reality, most of them are out in bins and bags in the garage or the storage shed)
Gina, I love your sense of humor and really it is amazing to me how much you and David are alike in so many ways. I am sure you have a better sense of humor than he does but still, he has that same drive to get matters taken care of that you do. Sorry your little helper was feeling under the weather and you had to weather the storm mostly on your own.Now that everything is in place maybe Mr. Organization will truly help to keep it that way. And as for Noah lets hope he is feeling up to par for his big weekend. I really saw from the pics though that he probably doesn't want for any toy, so the $ I sent in his card will be best decided by you as to what he does or does not need.
Hope the day is a good one.☼
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