Toy shakedown

Oh man!

Timely as usual.

Guess what I am doing right this very millisecond? Organizing sozlet's STUFF!

Her all-time favorite thing is art, so we went to Staples today and got some art organizing things to try to tame the huge undifferentiated mass that organically emerges daily. Several stacking inbox-type shelves for different kinds of paper and finished art (another looming question that I almost started a thread on earlier, what to do with kid art when it gets to 20-30 pieces/ day), and smaller stacking bins for markers, glue sticks, scissors, etc. Right now we have it all in one container and she has to dig around and everything goes everywhere and she can't always find what she's looking for anyway.

In terms of general toys, we typically do an after-Christmas purge. Haven't done that yet. I have a few categories of boxes downstairs. One is a rainy-day box of old toys, we do a rotation now and then. (She has A-level and B-level toys, A-level is always available and B-level are in rotation.) Another box is stuff I put together for mentoring deaf babies/toddlers -- it's anything vaguely educational. She gave her go-ahead for that.

We've given away a lot, to Goodwill and to friends/ family.

I've also tried to affect incoming stuff by giving er guidance to gift-givers, and that went great this year. She has a lot less over-abundance than usual, though she still got a ton of little plastic cheap things from all over. (Main gift-givers like grandparents gave some cool/ useful stuff, but...)

I've noticed that organizing helps her play with toys, too, if they're in a huge mass she doesn't find certain things and just plays with the same things over and over or proclaims herself bored. I'm hatching plans to organize the dress-up stuff which has taken over her closet, a corner shelf thing with a bar underneath and then shelves for hats and wands and such.

Purge and rotate, purge and rotate--and organize, organize, organize.

You ladies have the post-holiday routine down.

Oh gosh how I wish I could learn that guidence to gift-givers. Mo's birthday is coming up in just a few weeks and I would love to think up a way to ease the situation.

As you well know, he has so many complications. We end up with way too much stuff - stuff with way too many pieces. This year we ended up with stuff for "ages 8 and over".

For his birthday, I've told my family to send seeds for our garden.

We will probably have a little party with his neighborhood friends and I will request seeds from them as well.

His bio-family will not be content with giving seeds.

Mo likes art stuff too. I'm so lucky that I have a garage full of frames and all of the required tools and goods to make mats. A lot of his stuff is matted and framed. A lot of it is thumbtacked to my office walls. Now that we have scissors, a lot of it ends up in the trash.

My neighbor hung a clothesline in her kitchen and she clothes pins all of her kids stuff up there - it doesn't take up much space.

We painted one wall in my office with chalk board paint so Mo can doodle on the walls, erase and start again. Chalkboard paint is the bomb.

(Have I confessed that I am agonizing over your comment in my thank you card thread about Sozlets representational art? We are still firmly entrenchened in the abstract expressionism stage.)

Hey there, Noddy.

That sounds like some celebrity diet: purge and rotate and you will soon be ready to star in a major motion picture.

It is amazing how this stuff piles up. People with more than one kid must absolutely dispare about all this stuff.

You know how Nike grinds up old sneakers and makes soft playing fields - I swear, if I could think up a way to grind up unplayed with plastic toys I would be a millionaire.

And I would treat you and Soz and me to a terrific vacation somewhere void of plastic anythings.

Sozlet's been representational for a surreally long time, not sure what's up with that. She started two years ago I think. Yeah, 'cause that's when she got the table easel for Christmas, sat down, and drew a face. We were gobsmacked.

OOh, chalkboard paint.

We're OK with displaying -- the old refrigerator standby, I put 'em up in her art area, etc. I love the clothesline idea.

The main issue is that there is so blessed MUCH if it. So far what I have done is immediately put the best things up for display, put the rest in a pile, and then privately purge the pile. If there are 5 drawings of a person that are basically the same, I'll keep the best one and get rid of the other 4.

I think it was nimh -- someone here -- who said they were heartbroken to learn that a whole bunch of childhood art had been unceremoniously tossed. But if I ask her, "OK, which ones do you want to keep?", she always wants to keep ALL of them, even the ones that are bare except for a single squiggle.

Not sure if I should press the issue ("we can't keep all of them, you need to choose" -- blech, that doesn't feel right), just let enormous amounts of paper and multi-media projects accumulate in the basement, or continue the private purging which she hasn't noticed yet. Any time she's asked about a piece of art, I've had it and been able to retrieve it for her.

Hmm. :-?

I want that plastic plaything free vacation.

Anybody can buy and give crap... I give the nieces and nephews books.
Why not give something precious?

(I confess, I HAVE given my favorite nieces hand-made Dollhouses... I enjoyed making them, and the nieces treasure them.)

Hand made dollhouses!? That would survive any toy shakedown, Magnus.

Books are also great gifts.

To me, any gift is a nice gift simply because someone took the time to go pick something out. I'm not complaining about the quality of the gift - just the over abundance of stuff. There is no way that a kid could play with that much stuff. There is no way that a house can hold that much stuff!

Oh, right on time this thread is. I do a toy purge before AND after Christmas. I've decided that limiting gifts from us helps keep the abundance down. We gave them three things each and they probably got 4 more from others. We have a longstanding agreement among my siblings that they don't need to give the kids gifts, ever, but the ones who live close by still do. Grandparents send money which, this year, bought them both gymnastics classes that they've been wanting for a long time. Our situation with the abundance of gifts is a exacerbated by the fact that they both have birthdays within weeks of Christmas -- the younger is 4 days after.

I've decided that from now on, as hard as it will be, they will get only one gift from us on birthday and Christmas. We buy them things throughout the year whenever we feel like it, so I think I will use those events to get them the bigger items that they've wanted longer.

As for the art thing, I keep a file box handy where we put all of the art that is to be kept but not displayed. When it's full, we go through it together, choose 4 of the best pieces, dump everything else and start again. They got lots of good art stuff for Christmas, including modeling clay that never dries (a big hit), and have been happily creating since Christmas.

We do something similar – we have those huge tubs and organize the toys and put them in – all the My Little Ponies go in one; Barbies another; arts and crafts in another; dress up stuff in another and they go under her bed. Other things in a toy box and others on shelves all depending on how much they are currently being played with. Every once in a while we rotate toys not played with in while to an easier to reach spot and trade with those wearing out their welcome. It is almost like there are always pretty new toys around. When both kids are too old for toys, like for us rattles and little baby stuff, they go to Goodwill.

We also have some little plastic shelf with little drawers bought at WalMart that can hold all the little things even the little crap that my girls love from their kids meals.

I would suggest for anything that is too old for him to put away some where until he is older. I received a very cute little Barbie kitty cat toy set for my daughter when she was one and half. It was for three and older as it had little pieces. I just stuck it up on a high shelf and plan on pulling it out when she is a little older and seems tired of her old toys.

The best gift ever seems to be these big lego-blocks appropriate for a one-year old with a wagon to put them in. My six year old received this for her first birthday and still plays with it today.

Books are wonderful--but good picture books are also expensive. I kept track through the year of the books my boys enjoyed most from the library. When asked for suggestions on present-giving occasions, I'd just pull out the list.

There were several years when the splashy loot came from other people and Santa brought stuff to organize the splashy loot.

That's a good idea. Just state it as fact, which 4 (or 5 or 10, I'll figure it out) do you want to keep? What do you say if they protest? (I always like to have my reactions lined up ahead of time -- if I don't know what I'm going to say, she always senses it, I swear. If I have a good solid answer she's way less likely to even ask, and just goes with it.)

I saw that modeling clay, thought of getting it, prolly will next time I see it.

Unfortunately, when they protest I say just what you were thinking of saying. "We can't keep them all." At this stage, most of their work is doodles and doesn't have much sentimental value. It sounds like sozlet is more advanced, in which case you might have an easier time letting her keep 10 or 20. I usually point out that there isn't any more room in the box and that we need to make room for all of the new creations that they will be making.

Cool, I've never heard of that. But there was this item in the newspaper's magazine the other day (OK, like, a year ago) about magnetic paint. Magnetic wall-paint that is. Just cover the entire wall (heavy stuff), and if you want, paint an extra layer over on top of it in whatever your preferred colour is (the magnetic paint being grey or blue or something) - and presto. Just stick **** up on the wall.

Oooh!!!

Were you the one who was upset about kid art being tossed? Any suggestions if so?

I dont know that I was ... cant remember, in any case.

I was pretty upset when my mum had thrown away my toy Tour de France bicyclists (metal ones, each with different shirts and everything) ... OK, so the cat had pissed on the bag, but damn you can clean em cant ya? Managed to retrieve them tho ...

All in fair measure I guess.