The great toy sort

I've been doing pretty well with the small tasks, so today I decided to tackle a bigger one.  Back when I was all-wise and all-knowing pre-kids, I wondered how/why people accumulated such large collections of small random toys (aka "junk") in the bottoms of toy boxes and bins and everywhere.  And why didn't they just sort through them or throw them away?  Then I had kids.  And they got toys.  And games.  And Happy Meals.  And I tried to "sort" things.  And everything just slowly migrated all over the house.  And now I understand.

So with Emily's birthday coming up this weekend and Christmas just around the corner, I decided it was high time for a "great toy sort".  Emily & Lincoln happily obliged in helping to literally empty almost everything and dump it all in the middle of the living room floor.  Emily's exact quote when I was taking this picture was, "This is so messy I can't even believe it!"  Me either.

The sorting part actually wasn't that bad because I kind of had a plan and I kind of had a jump start using the boxes I had previously used to organize other toys in the upstairs closet (most of which are still pretty sorted).  However, Emily & Lincoln weren't exactly very helpful.  In the beginning they just got distracted with toys they had forgotten about.  In the middle they would "sort" toys into the wrong piles.  Towards the end they would dump out a box/container of newly sorted toys to play with for 5 minutes before moving on to the next one.  It took about 3 hours to sort, label and put everything away and then vacuum up the crumbs left behind.  It feels so good to have it done even though I know I'll probably have to do it all over again post-Christmas. 

Here are a few tips from the trenches I learned today:

• Have plenty of boxes and containers in a variety of sizes available for sorting.
• Have a large wastebasket available.  Use it.
• Wear shoes.  This activity is hazardous in bare feet!
• Have some inspirational music playing.
• Have a water bottle handy.  This is exercise!
• Labels are your friend.  It teaches the whole family your organizational "system".  This is an amazing product.  I now have pink & green labels everywhere.
• You've heard it before, but pack some toys away and set a reminder to yourself to swap them out later.  Less toys = more playing.  This is so hard for me to do because I think the kids will be "missing out" if something isn't always available to play with.  The opposite is actually true.