Getting Organized

Getting my crap organized has been a life long dream of mine. I have always had the desire but never really had the right tools. Since I had Brooklyn ( May 2007) I have been so overwhelmed with my responsabilites as a stay at home mom. I was getting eaten alive by all that I had to do. My house NEVER seemed to stay clean, laundry was a beast, my life felt outta control, and I was drowning. And my attitude showed. I would get comments from Aidan like "Mom, why are you so grumpy?" And I could never give him the right answer. I didn't even know why I was grumpy. I just was.

Last month, we went to a birthday party for one of Sydney's friends. It was a good time to go and sit and talk with other moms ( I don't have that in the Spanish Branch) and talk about stuff like " what do you do when this happends" or " how do you deal with this type of situation." And the topic of conversation was " how do you deal with organizing all your kids toys?" For me, I've never had a good organizing system for the toys in our house. I had a friend Kari who had 4 boys and all the toys possibly known to man... are her stuff was all in tubs. Ok, I thought, I'll try that. Didn't work. all the toys just got thrown in the tubs. It wasn't organized. So talking with these moms from the birthday party - I had an epiphany. What if I were to get several different tubs, organize the toys so each category of toy had their own bin, LABEL the tub and include a picture of what was in the tub. ( It gets better!) THEN put the toys UP in the closet shelves. If the kids want a tub, they need to ask for it, and when they are done, they clean it up and then they can get another tub down. BRILLIANT!!!!
So, I went to Target and bought a crap load of different sized bins. We came home and went to the toy room and I dumped the toy box out on the floor and had all the different bins out. One for cars, barbies, ponies, transformers, you get the idea. And I had the kids help me sort out all the toys. I was able to throw away crappy toys, broken toys, and get rid of stuff the kids no longer played with. Talk about liberating!! I then explained to the kids the toy rule. If you want to play with something, just ask, and when you're done everything goes back in the bin and we put a lid on it. And for the first time in 5 years we have a system that works GREAT for us!! Now this has sparked a chain reaction in my house. I'M ON A ROLL NOW!!!