Rotating your kids toys solves two problems: it helps to reduce toy clutter and it also keeps them interested in their toys longer. Whenever I would pull out a “new” toy that had been stored away for awhile, it was literally like they were seeing this toy for the first time.

Another good idea for toy rotation is to create a special basket of toys for a certain occasions. For example, a client of mine was having a hard time cooking dinner because her 3 year old was always at her feet begging her to play with him. My solution was to create a toy basket of items that he only got to play with while she was cooking. I told her to rotate the toys every week or two and also to add new toys every once and awhile. The last thing I heard was that cooking dinner had become a lot easier in her household! Now that’s a nice thing to hear.

Post from: Blisstree

Toy Rotation – Tame Those Toys Thursday

I just put a new cube organizer in my daughter’s room and she loves it and actually uses it to keep her things organized! It’s a wonderful thing.

That’s why I love this Sassy Flower Pop Up toy organizer. It has an adorable pattern and it’s something that is fun and easy for kids to use.

Kids could store anything from stuffed animals, blocks or clothes. It also collapses for easy storage and transportation. This is a great item to add to your little girl’s room.

Post from: Blisstree

Sassy Flower Pop Up – Tame Those Toys Thursday

A great way to keep toy clutter under control is to have the one toy in, one toy out rule. This means that every time your child gets a new toy, he/she has to decide on one to get rid of and donate to someone else. Not only does this cut down on the toy clutter, but it teaches your kids to let go of things and give to those who are less fortunate than they are.

Every year before Christmas, we go through the toys and get rid of ones that the kids don’t play with anymore for whatever reason. We have also boxed up toys that we knew our youngest one would eventually want to play with but wasn’t quite ready for yet.

Decluttering the toys before Christmas leaves room in your house for the new ones they will be getting. It’s also a great way to start off the New Year!

Post from: Blisstree

The One in One Out Rule – Tame Those Toys Thursday

For those of you that are new and have no clue what I am talking about, lol, here is a list of my Monday through Friday topics:

• Motivate Me Monday
• Tick Tock Tuesday
• Where’s My Desk Wednesdays
• Tame Those Toys Thursdays
• Find It Friday

Here’s a brief description for each day which I posted awhile back:

• Motivate Me Mondays - Every Monday I will issue you a challenge. Either to go through one drawer in your house and purge and organize it. Or, to take a trash bag, go through one room in your house, set the timer for 5 minutes, and get rid of some stuff. Or, to sit down and write out a step by step plan for the room that bothers you the most. This plan would involve everything it is going to take to get your room back! From beginning to end.

• Tick Tock, There Goes That Darn Clock Tuesdays – This day is all about time management. We will learn together how to get back our days and weeks and be able to look back on them with a smile on our face.

• Where is My Desk? Wednesdays - This day is all about that home office. From bills to files to piles and piles of paper. We will also cover the computer, your office supplies and when to turn off that phone so you can get some work done. We have voice mail for a reason people!!

• Tame Those Toys Thursdays - This isn’t just going to be about toys. Toys just happened to start with a T. This day is all about your kids. (If you don’t have any, well, email this day to a friend who does.) We will be talking about kids’ schedules, bedrooms, school work and whatever else is in between. Teaching our kids good organization skills at a young age is something they will take with them and benefit from for the rest of their lives.

• Find It Fridays – Are you sick and tired of always looking for things? Do you find yourself rummaging through drawers and closets and under the bed for who knows what? Well, this day is all about finding everything within a few seconds. It really is a good thing to know where your keys are as you are leaving the house. Or to know exactly where those twin sheets are when you need them. Or to be able to look in your closet and see exactly what you have in your wardrobe.

I’m also adding a topic to Saturdays and Sundays:

• Supper Saturdays will be all about meal planning, grocery shopping and kitchen related organizing.
• Sweep Through Sundays will be a day that I “sweep” through the b5media blogs and find topics that other bloggers have written that I feel you can benefit from. We have an amazing group of bloggers here and they all have something great to share.

Alright, I think that does it! Let’s get started….

Post from: Blisstree

A Note from Declutter It!

Watch this video clip about a nifty little way to organize your child’s room with bins. She “labels” the bins for children who can’t read in a very fun and different way.

Post from: Blisstree

Organizing Your Child’s Room Video

I am a huge advocate of using every square inch of a room for storage, expecially since we live in a small house. I’ve had to get very creative.

One area that I love to store things in my kids’ rooms is under the bed. Now, my boys’ room is very unique. They have bunk beds and a wall bed in their room. Yes, a wall bed. I absolutely love it!

My older son was sleeping on the top bunk but he said his brother kept shaking the bed evry time he would roll over, so he decided to switch to the wall bed. It’s kind of hard to store stuff under a wall bed, lol!

Under the bottom bunk we have one of those huge pull out trundles on rollers and we store some toys there and that’s about it. I really need to utilize that space better. We keep the top bunk up for sleepovers.

I have used the storage under my daughter’s bed a lot better.

There wasn’t quite enough space under there to put the baskets that I wanted, so we bought bed risers and now there is plenty of room. We also use the bed risers in the master bedroom. I just love them!

For my daughter’s room I use baskets similar to the ones pictured here, the espresso basket, but in a different color. They look very nice lined up under her bed and they work very well for her.

We store all of her purses (she has inherited my purse obsession), stuffed animals, polly pockets and other small toys and also some dress up clothes.

They are easy for her to pull out, play with the contents, put it all back, (or not, oy, you should see her room right now…notice I didn’t post any pictures of it for you, lol!) and scoot it back under her bed.

I would recommend buying higher quality baskets because some of the cheaper ones break off and you will have pieces of wicker everywhere and it also snags on blankets. I learned that lesson the hard way.

Some other products I recommend for under-the-bed storage for kids rooms are:

Nightstand Basket – Under Bed Storage Basket

(2) Underbed Storage Drawers

Iris Under Bed Storage Drawer – Plastic

If you utilize that space under the bed, you can leave more space in the closet for clothes, shoes, out-of-season clothes and other items.

Post from: Blisstree

Under the Bed Storage for Kids’ Rooms

Keeping kids’ toys organized can really be such a pain. Now, before I show you my favorite products, let me just say that it doesn’t matter what products you buy. If you don’t first have some key principles in place with your kids and their toys, you will always have an out of control mess on your hands. Here are a few things to follow:

1. Put back what you are playing with before you get something else out.

2. Go through their toys before big present events like birthdays and Christmas and help them choose toys to donate to kids in need.

3. One toy in, one toy out rule.

4. Have either a room or a space in their room designated for toy storage.

Following a few key principles like those will help keep their toys from taking over the entire house. Now on to my favorite toy storage!

My 10 Favorite Products for Toy Organization
(Click on each picture for a larger view.)

1. 5.4 Quart Plastic Shoe Box – Clear by Iris

2. ClosetMaid 9-Cube Organizer

3. ClosetMaid Fabric Drawer

4. Kids Stuff Organizer

5. Jumbo Toy Hammock

6. Iris Under Bed Storage Drawer

7. Bongo Buckets (Set Of 4)

8. Eight Bin Toy Organizer and Shelf-Color Natural

9. Kids’ Denim Storage Bench

10. Calypso Toy Trolley

Post from: Blisstree

My 10 Favorite Products for Toy Organization

How many of you have your kids help out around the house? This is something I had to really work on. I know that may sound crazy, but I like things done around the house my way. I want to look in my linen closet and see all the towels folded the same way. I want to look in my kitchen cabinets and see all the dishes put in the “right” spot. I want to look in my pantry and see all the breakfast food on the breakfast food shelf.

But as my kids have gotten older and I have gotten way busier, I realized that I can’t and shouldn’t take care of the house all my myself. I asked myself “Do I want them to go to college with no idea how to do their own laundry?” No, that wouldn’t be good. So I had to let go of some of my perfectionism and teach and allow my kids to help out around the home. They live there. They help make the mess. They need and should learn to clean up after themselves.

So how does this chore thing work? Well, I believe the use of some sort of chore chart for younger kids is great. As far as teenagers, I think their chore list posted somewhere is appropriate for them. Kids need visual reminders.

Here are some of the most popular chore charts:

The “I Can Do It” Reward Chart. There are 20 different, colorful chores and behaviors to choose from in your chart and it has strong magnetic strips to hold it securely to any metal surface, like your refrigerator.

This is the Dowling Magnets Chore Chart. If you want to involve your children in making a chore chart, take their photos while they’re doing each chore & adhere them to the chart. You can even use Sharpie permanent marker on your chore chart for the items you do not intend to erase often. (Nail polish remover will do the trick when you find that it is time to remove the.)

This is the Melissa & Doug Deluxe Magnetic Responsibility Chart. Help kids understand the concept of behavior and rewards. This entertaining, magnetic activities board feature the innovative combination of magnets and wood. Includes a dry-erase board and 134 magnets depicting behaviors and rewards.

If you have any tips on how to get the kids involved with the chores at home, send them in!

Post from: Blisstree

Kids and Chores

• What educational activities do you have planned for the summer?
• What things do you feel you need to work on this summer to help prepare you for next year?
• How many books do you plan on reading this summer?

Now I am all about a lazy summer! We swim, visit family, meet with friends, go on vacation. You know, we do….summer things. But I also remember my kids getting very bored at times last summer.

So, for this summer I plan on doing more educational activities that will be fun for them too. I don’t really want to make a schedule out of it, but maybe planning a once a week librabry trip, or once every two weeks say we will go to a botanical garden or museum.

I also want to make sure that I schedule (ewww, there’s that schedule word again) quiet reading times for them once a day. For my daughter, that’s no problem and for my 3 year old, well that means me reading to him. For my 7 year old son, he’s going to fight me a little, but it’s good for him right?

Even though I want our summer to be fun and spontaneous and relaxing, I also need to remember that I should help them feed their brain so that come the end of August, it’s not mush.

Do any of you schedule educational activities with your kids in the summer? If so, what kinds of things do you do?

We are on the count down here…only 7 days more of school. Wow! Also, only 4 weeks until our move. Oh my goodness. I feel tired just thiking about the months ahead.

Post from: Blisstree

Tame Those Toys Thursday – Organize The Summer

• Put up a cork board in your kids’ rooms to display their artwork instead of letting it take over the refrigerator. Kids are proud of their work and should be able to display it. This way everyone is happy.
• Have the whole family do a 5 minute quick clean every morning and night. This helps control clutter. Keeping a house looking neat should not take hours and hours. Preventive maintenance is the key.
• Add hooks over the bathroom door or mounted on the wall or door for robes and extra towels. It makes it easier for kids to hang up their things as opposed to a towel rod.
• Store all your childrens’ crafts in the place where they like to do them. If that is at the dining room table, then put all their paints, crayons, coloring books and
  paper in a plastic cart with drawers or if in a hutch. There are many decorative organizing items that would look great in the dining room or kitchen. 15 minutes before dinner have them clean up the table and put all the items back in the appropriate drawer.
• Use shelves instead of toy boxes to store your kids’ toys. This way they can see all the toys they have and this will put an end to digging through the toy box and
  emptying all the contents on the floor.
• Give each of your kids their own basket or container for the bathroom. Have them store all of their toiletries in there. When they are getting ready in the morning or at night for bed, they take out their basket, use what they need, put everything back in and store it under the sink. It helps keep those bathroom counters clear of clutter.

Do you have any tried and true tips that you use for your kids’ spaces? If so, send them on in!

Post from: Blisstree

Tame Those Toys Thursday – Some Great Tips