The Toys Have Taken OVER!!!!!

As anyone with multiple children (not just twins!) knows the pain that comes with toys!  They are just everywhere!  You have bins or toy boxes to store them in throughout the house.  With kids that are close in age and of the same gender, of course you have multiples of the same toys!  So how do you keep them organized?  

For us, I put them into those collapsible bins that can go into the bookshelves.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  They have them at Target and the Dollar Store.  I was tempted to have two sets, one for each girl, but they really do trade off which one the claim is theirs a lot.  Instead, I decided to put them into like categories.  

To do this, think about all the toys they have, even down to the ones that come in the fast food kids meals!  My girls love those, and play with them for a bit, but then forget about them.  Once this happens, I go through and toss the ones that they don't play with anymore.  I feel bad at first, but guess what??!!  They don't even notice that they are gone!  Once I had my categories figured out, I went and got the boxes to put them in.  

In my house, horses and ponies (My Little Pony) are a BIG deal!  I have one for just the ponies and horses!  I put them into it, and all those little accessories that come with them, I took an old Halloween bucket and put those into it, that way they didn't get tangled up in the hair.  Next was the barbies, and I did the same thing with their accessories!  It takes a bit to get this all together at first, but let me tell you what!  Having all those toys have a place makes clean up easier!

The girls are in VPK now, and their teacher is doing a letter a week for them to learn about.  To get them to help clean up, I turn it into a game!  We play find the toy that starts with the letter __, and put it in it's place.  This is helping to clean their rooms, and at the same time they are learning more about the letters and words!  It doesn't always work, but we are learning and growing as we go, and at the end of the day, they were learning and cleaning at the same time!  Parenting is tough, but the thing that I'm learning is that I will learn how to be a better parent to them everyday, just by the things that they show me!