WFMW - Controlling Toy Chaos

As you may recall, Big Daddy and I became the parents to three daughters at once in January of 2005. Talk about your culture shock. One of the things we realized almost immediately was that if we didn't think of some way to organize the toy chaos in our little house, we would quite possibly lose our ever lovin' minds.

It's really simple, and has always Worked for Me (Us), but you'd be surprised how many people are appalled at the idea when I suggest it. I mean, you'd think we were recommending [insert something horrendous here, cause it's late and I'm drawing a blank].

I suggest this often to people who are bemoaning the toy clutter in their kids' rooms, and the responses I get range from incredulity to horror to disbelief to scoffing. I just don't get it. But here goes. Get ready, cause it's drastic!

Our girls are allowed to play with one toy (or category of toys) at a time. What that means in a houseful of girls is this: You can play with Polly Pockets. All of them. Including the Polly cruise ship and Polly's horses. Cause the horses, they love cruising on the high seas. But please do not get out puzzles in the middle of the Pollys.

When you're done with Polly and her paraphernalia, put her up and then you may get out the puzzles.

We have three girls, and they may not all be playing with the same thing at the same time. But if they're playing with different things, they're also playing in different rooms. That way, Barbie and her minions don't get into a turf war with The Littlest Pet Shop gang. You don't want that crap going down in the Texas suburbs.

Y'all, this has been the rule in our house since day one, and the only time our girls have a problem with it seems to be when we have company, or when they're at someone else's house. Stray from our regular routine, and then civilized life as we know it flies out the window on Fairytopia wings. But we make allowances for brain farts.

So. Big Daddy and I were at a marriage retreat for adoptive couples a couple of weeks ago, and one of the topics of discussion was messy kids' rooms. We were so excited to share our successful way of handling this, and oh my goodness, the two couples at our table looked at us like we were rip roaring crazy. "Oh, that wouldn't work in our house." "Our kids would never do that." "Our guys like to dump everything out at once." Okay, don't gripe about it if you're not willing to fix it.

I didn't give them my suggestion for guaranteed success. Take all the toys out of their room until they do what you say. Oh my goodness, it's crazy, but it just might work!

So there it is. Our solution may not work for everyone, but if you want to simplify that area of your life, it's definitely worth a try. Now go on over to Shannon's, and check out all the wonderful ideas.