Toys, Toys, and More Toys!

Oh my gosh do my kids have tons of toys! Granted, it does look a bit worse because most of our kids' toys are in one room in the basement, but holy cow! It's actually rather embarrassing. When you have three children of different ages and both boys and a girl, it's hard to get rid of toys.

I hit my, "We need to get rid of some of these toys!" point the other day. I tend to develop attachments to things until I start to get stressed out because of the clutter. At that point, everything is fair game! When I told the kids we needed to start cleaning up and they were complaining that there was too much, I knew some of these much-loved toys needed to go. I have a really hard time throwing away perfectly good items. I hate to feel wasteful, so I'll always garage sale, donate to Goodwill, or Freecycle something that I think still has a lot of life in it.

I did throw away all of those little kids' meal toys that just clutter up the place. Then, I pulled out some of the lesser used toys. We have so many kids' items, that I think we'll actually have a garage sale this year. To make preparing for a garage sale easier, I wrote prices for each toy on a sheet of paper that I tucked in the bag with the toys. Now, when garage sale time rolls around, we just have to write the price on some tape and stick it to the toy. (Okay, so in reality, my husband will be doing that because if I do it, I'll start to second-guess myself.)

You know, I just had a realization. Part of the reason I feel bad about getting rid of the kids' toys is that someone spent time and hard earned money to purchase each toy for the kids. Here's my "aha!" idea... I think I'll have my dear hubby keep track of how much money is earned from selling the toys. Once it's all done, we can split that amount of money into three, and deposit it into each of our kids' savings accounts. It's the best of both worlds. We don't have toys laying around that aren't being used, and the kids have extra savings because of those toys.

Now there are still a ton of toys in the kids' play area, but there's plenty of time until our garage sale to weed out a few more toys. Just don't tell my kids!

Thinking outside the box

I encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to organizing. I absolutely love stores that sell stuff to help you organize. I could spend a ton of money there on all of the cute little bins and other storage items. I don't know about you, but as much as I love all of that cool stuff, though, we don't have an endless supply of money to spend on all of those fabulous items. Because we're on a budget, I sometimes have to think outside the box.

There's nothing to say you can't use boxes and bins you already have laying around the house just because that wasn't their intended purpose. We have all types of boxes and bins around our house being used for things other than they were initially meant for. It's okay of they're not the most beautiful boxes or bins. They can be covered or decorated with fabrics, wrapping paper, or other items you may already have around the house. The trick is not saving every box or bag you receive, though, because that can lead to a whole other problem which we'll start conquering later - clutter.

As we begin on this organizing journey together, I encourage you to start thinking outside the box.