The big pre-Christmas toy cleaning

Anyone else tackling this?

My kids just never pick up. It's driving me absolutely insane. I have to bribe them half the time, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I refuse to do it for them, so it's just piling up and piling up until the house is a huge MESS, and I'm honestly going nuts over it. There's a pile of STUFF under their table, where they just push things off when they're done with them. I just don't know what to do anymore. No matter how much I organize things in bins, they just end up dumping everything eventually (and our storage is a cupboard with sliding doors, it's not very accessible and doesn't make it easy for them to put things away either, as the only thing we can do really in there is pile bins...). But still. Dh is no help and that's three week ends in a row that he says he'll help, then sleeps in until 10am, then has his coffee and whatnot until 12pm, and by then the last thing I want to do is clean up.

We have to pick up everything and sort things out before Sunday. Hopefully put even more stuff away (our office is full of stuff they don't play with anymore). Wish me luck. I'm not sure we won't kill each other in the process.

Oh yeah, and how do you store their stuff?

 

I think it's just hard at this age, but I try to make it fun. I have them pick up 5 trains or something and make a big deal about what good counters they are. I also think it really helps to do it daily and try hard to encourage picking up as you go. They do well with some things and awesome with others.

We have two of the stairstep shape bin systems from Ikea. Can't remember what they are called. Troika or something? We are getting at least one more after the holiday--maybe two. I like storing like with like, and we have too many different types for the number of bins we have currently. I love that system. We have a Little People bin for all the small pieces, stuffed animal bins, Mr. Potato Head bin, car bin, doll bin, Lego bin, tiny little crap Anna loves bin (Squinkies and Polly Pocket and such), etc. We also have a train table with two drawers underneath where we store trains and Imaginext stuff and a kitchen with storage for all the pots and pans and food. And a couple bookcases. There's still stuff everywhere, but we try.

 

Yeah I wish we had room for the trofast stuff!

 

Ugh, mine are older but we still battle this. We're in the process of trying to purge some stuff right now. What's worked in the past is "bribing" them with something small for every so many # of items picked up. For example, they were really into silly bands. So I told them for ever 10 things they picked up or put in the trash, they would earn a silly band. It got done pretty quick. I've done it with $ too. Say, 10 cents for every 10 things. We have so many toys and crap, it's overwhelming and it honestly gets me worked up and angry with how they treat their things. This is one reason we have cut back on the # of gifts and amount we've spent this year.

 

We do like Rachael and store like stuff with like. Almost everything is in clear plastic bins from Walmart that fit on our huge Ikea shelf. I drew pictures for each bin, so the doll clothes bin is labeled with a picture of clothes, the train bin has a train on it, etc. That way my kids could (theoretically) clean up before they could read. They're not awesome at cleaning up so I still do most of it. But to get them involved I create games. Find five red things while your sister finds five blue things. Piper picks up the train tracks while Cricket picks up the Legos. That type of stuff. Oh, and we frequently do "crazy cleanup" where I put on a fast song and we all run around the room picking things up and laughing. It's not totally effective, but at least I don't have to listen to anyone whine.

 

It doesn't have a huge footprint.