Kid's
I really cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be sitting down writing this post. Books and kids clutter are big challenge areas for me and I knew they would take quite a bit of time to tackle. I don't know if I will ever be "done" in either of these areas, but I am pleased with the progress I made.
Here are some before pics of my girls' room (they share a room). They are 4 and 6, so I still have quite a bit of control over their stuff. I know this won't always be the case, so I'm trying to set a tone for our house and exercise my authority while I can.
BEFORE
My first step was to remove all their clothing and create a family closet in the master bedroom closet. You can read about that HERE. Then I started removing a lot of the boxes and baskets that we had toys in. Then I started removing toys...
I did not include the girls in this process. Usually I do, but I knew there would be arguments between the two and I knew I would not get the results I was hoping for. I did, however, "hide" the toys I took from their room and put them in a storage bin in the garage. It will be interesting to see what they notice is gone. When I pulled the storage bin down from storage, I was surprised at what was inside. None of us had missed any of it....so the contents of the bin went into a bag which we'll donate, and I was able to fill the bin with the new stuff I had pulled.
AFTER
Their closet has a lot of hard to access storage space....I was thrilled to see empty space in this corner!
And in this corner I was able to consolidate the in-between sized clothes and shoes and put them in the harder to reach area.
Here are the baskets and boxes I pulled from their room! I am just amazed at how my previous attempts to organize were actually contributing to my clutter.
Do they like dressing up? I guess you could hang dress up clothes in their closet now. :)
ReplyDeleteMy youngest does and we have a whole slew of princess dresses. They are hung up on the lower rod, you just can't see them in the picture.
ReplyDeleteYou must be reading my mind because I am having this exact issue in my house today!! I have no idea what to do with the toys in my youngest two daughters' room. My 5 yr old & 13 yr old daughters share a room. The 5 yr old has all her toys and the hand-me-downs from two older sisters & friends. I've pulled two large rubbermaid tubs out of her room and there is still TOO MUCH!! They spent all day looking for a Nintendo DS that got lost in that room! How do you lose a DS in a bedroom? I've tried every form of organization that magazines show. She has lots of little toys & pieces and I've tried sorting them by category, but she plays with them all together and then they get mixed up again. I'm at my wits' end. She honestly does play with everything she has almost daily, but I wish I could figure out something. I love the after pictures in your girls' room! I think you did a great job. In our old house I had a huge walk-in in our master bedroom and we probably could've done a family closet, but it's just not going to work in this house & honestly I like having the girls' clothes in their rooms, but it is a very cool idea. I've seen some homes where the family closet is attached to the laundry room and I think that would be SO cool!
ReplyDeleteJill, I love the way you hide the girls things in storage for a while before donating them. That way if they discover something "missing" that really has meaning for them you can pull it back out! My mom was always tossing stuff f mine when I was growing up and (this sounds melodramatic) but I felt really traumatized by it. I never knew what would go missing on me. You have a good approach!
ReplyDeleteSo you didn't play the 10 minute toss with them? Do you think they're too young still?
I don't think they are too young, but I have asked them to find things they don't want so much in the past year that they are starting to cling to their remaining toys even more. When we moved into this current house they lost quite a bit of big stuff.... their play kitchen, doll house, kid-sized chairs, art easel, etc. Then just before Christmas we laid all their stuffed animals out in our room and had them go "shopping" for their favorites. At the time, they didn't realize what would happen to the ones they didn't choose. There were quite a few tears shed, but two days later they didn't remember it - and they haven't mentioned it since!
ReplyDeleteI constantly find them playing with things that aren't toys - I try to point out to them how much they do this. My hope is they will realize how little they value their toys.
This looks great! Streamlined and organized. I love it. You did a fantastic job. My husband and Ia re staring down my son;s toys in a few weeks. We've tried to be very careful about limiting the amount of toys, but they have seemed to pile us. The problem we have, is my son does pay with all of his toys. He rotates though them over the course of two weeks. He also pulls them altogether into hilarious imaginative scenarios. I do know there are some we can set aside and see if he asks for them. I think at this age, it is harder on us. Hearing the dreaded "Where ________ go..." is probably keeping us from getting rid of too much. the storage bin will be the solution for this.
ReplyDeleteIdea for small junk toys - My grandson has an abundance of fast food meal toys. The whole family started doing geocaching (sort of like a scavenger hunt-geocach.com) and some of the cachs have small items you can trade for. Now he will use those little toys that he really doesn't play with as items in the cachs they find.
ReplyDelete