Spring Cleaning to Simplify Your Kid's Life

Do you ever find the kids like the box better the toy that comes inside?

Mine do! Maybe it's the simplicity of the box that's so appealing. With nothing more than their imagination the plain ol' shipping box transforms into some pretty awesome adventures.

Race cars. Forts. Spaceships. Dog houses. Doll beds. Playpens. Club houses. Kitty jail. The list goes on forever!

This is why simple is fun! Forget the complicated toys, things with batteries and noise making gadgets. Simple is the way to go.

Two weekends ago, we thoroughly cleaned out the kids' bedrooms. Earlier that week, it finally dawned on me "They have so much stuff serving no other purpose than taking up space!" Over the past couple of years it slowly became a constant battle to get the boys' bedrooms cleaned. Literally, "stuff" was everywhere. Happy Meal toys, outside toys that made their way indoors, broken toys, toys with missing parts, toys they've outgrown, activity and coloring books with all the pages colored or torn out, broken crayons, pens, and pencils, broken remotes, missing wheels, broken wheel barings, etc. Stuff stuffed under beds, in corners, beside the beds.

I want to pull my hair out thinking about it! It's an understatement to simply say things were just a big huge MESS!

No wonder they had such trouble cleaning their room, much less keeping it clean! I didn't realize it but my kids were set up for failure by having all these useless things around. After we were done cleaning out the bedrooms, each of the boys' "stuff" was reduced by a whopping two-thirds. If I hadn't seen it played with in the last year for J, six months for Wild Man, then it went in either the Trash or Yard Sale boxes.

We opted to keep more classic toys than the gadgety toys. Toys that will be around for a while...provided it is being played with regularly! Hot Wheels, building blocks, action figures, legos, balls, and pretend play (dress up clothes, toy hammers, wrenches, stethoscopes, etc) are all on the "keep" list. We kept some of the remote controled, gadgety, and techy toys too but only if it was not broken and fresh batteries confirmed it still worked properly.

Bags and bags of trash was hauled away. Several yard sale boxes were taken to the basement. It was a pretty labor intensive weekend. I was honestly shocked at the massive amounts of "junk" we cleared out of those two bedrooms but what an improvement! Each of the boys now has a full toy box of the toys they regularly play with AND they have a maneable number of toys they can properly care for.

Since our Spring Cleaning Weekend Extravaganza, their bedrooms have remained clean! A 5 minute round up gets most of the scattered toys put in their proper place. Now I can say my kids are set up for success when it comes to maintaining a clean bedroom.

Have you don't any Spring Cleaning yet?