I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend – and if you’re stateside, a fabulous holiday weekend! We love three-day weekends! Sometimes, it’s awfully nice that Mr Napping is a state employee. He gets all the federal holidays off, so today we are out playing and enjoying some family time.
This will be a real quick post, and it’s actually more of a tip than anything. Back around the beginning of the year, I initiated our toy rotation system. It’s worked great for the past few months. We’ve adjusted and we rotate the toys when my boys get bored with the ones we have inside. Sometimes, it’s a couple weeks and, sometimes, it’s a month or more. I love the system. If you missed those posts, check them out here: The Sort and The Divide.
Everything was going great, until Gator got mobile. Now, his favorite game is “How Fast Can I Dump ALL the Toys All Over the Floor” and my family room constantly looked like it’d been hit by a tornado because my kids are faster than me and I can’t seem to ever get ahead of the mess, so I stop trying. We were back to toys all over the floor all the time again… So, it was time for another change.
I decided that if Gator could only dump the containers on the floor, instead of everything inside of them, I would only have to pick up the containers and put them back on the shelf instead of having to pick up every dang toy in our house 500 bazillion times a day. But, I don’t have the budget to go out and get new containers, so I upcycled.
We love the Costco animal crackers and I love the containers they come in. Big jugs with twist top lids, perfect! I started out with two containers and separated the toys into cars & trucks and Little People figures. Cars went in one container and the Little People figures in the other. I printed off some labels on self-adhesive paper and stuck the labels on their respective containers. Now my boys can see which toys go where. Occasionally, they get frustrated because they can’t get into the toys themselves, but they are learning that they just need to ask.
This is working much better for us now. I can better control which toys are out on the floor and make the stipulation of picking up one container before the other one gets opened. And my boys are starting to pick up after themselves more. Love that! Ironically, the car bucket was empty and all 5000 toy cars are strewn about my living room when I took this picture. Despite that, this system is working for us.
We now have three containers (no, I’m NOT going to buy more animal crackers any time soon….) and these are working quite well. Even Gator (15.5 months) is starting to recognize which toys go in which containers. He doesn’t get it right every time, but if my 15 month-old will pick up his toys, I’m not going to complain! Another nice thing about these containers is that they stack on top of each other very nicely, it’s a total space saver!
If you’d like to get more While He Was Napping, you can find me here:
Gianna says
I love those containers! I made one last year for my twins’ ABC blocks and put the powerpuff girls on them. I also have some for birdseed with the futurama birds on them. All my kids think they are so fun.
Susan@Organized31 says
Love the labels and the organizing idea. Plus, there’s nothing better than a good repurposed organizing bin. I’d love if you came and shared at my first ever link party http://organized31.blogspot.com/2013/05/inspire-us-thursday-link-party-1.html