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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Organize Your Child's Toys






It's time to organize toys! If you have small children, then you probably get overwhelmed by the amount of toys that they tend to accumulate. At least that is true in our house, mostly thanks to the grandparents! It is an ongoing thing in our house to keep on top of toy organization.



If you are just joining us, we have been getting organized using Jennifer Ford Berry's Organize Now book.
It has some great info and tips on organizing various parts of our life and home. You can see past posts here:


Week 1 about Organizing Your Mind and Life Vision HERE,
Week 2 about Organizing Your Priorities HERE,
Week 3 about Organizing Your Schedule HERE
Week 4 about Organizing Your Cleaning Schedule HERE.
Week 5 about Organizing Your Personal Information HERE. 
Week 6 about Organizing Your Finances HERE. 
      Week 7 about Organizing Your Bill-paying System HERE.
        Week 8 about Organizing Your Receipts and Taxes HERE
Week 9 about Organizing Your Files HERE
                               Week 10 about Organizing your Magazines and Newspapers HERE.
                                               Week 11 about Organizing Your Email HERE
                                                Week 12 about Organizing Your Mail HERE


This Week's Goals:

1. Donate Toys

This is a great teaching opportunity for your kids. You may consider donating to a child in need. Jennifer also has a great suggestion to have your child choose a few toys to donate 1-2 months before Christmas. We took some of our toys to Goodwill last year. It was a good lesson and it was helpful to make a dent into some of our toy bins. We are planning to make this at least an annual event.

2. Sort Your Toys

Jennifer suggests reducing the number of toys your child has by 30%. Sort toys into piles of ones to keep, donate, sell or throw away (because they are broken or missing pieces). If you plan to donate or sell, make sure you clean them well.


3. Group Toys Together

We like to use clear plastic storage bins that easily stack. We try to categorize our bins of toys. For example, puzzles in one, legos in another, etc. Keep toys with small pieces on higher shelves, away from small children. Jennifer had a great tip to color code the back of puzzle pieces. That makes them easy to sort and put away if pieces get separated.

Tips:

1. Rotate toys

We only have so much room in our house to have toys out. Jennifer suggests having only half of your kid's toys accessible to them at one time. Every month or two, rotate some out. We like to have Andrew and Benjamin choose some toys that they would like to trade for "new" toys off of the shelf.  That way, they don't get tired of them.   

 How do you organize your child's toys? 

Thanks for reading and have a great day!!

Rebecca 
 
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