Keeping your toddler's toys fresh.

You might think this entry is about sanitizing or cleaning your child's toys, but that was the last thing on my mind when I thought about entertaining my kids with their toys.  Instead, it was, "How do I keep them playing with their toys?"  After only 20 minutes

All I wanted was for them to be as engaged as I was on cool winter mornings with my home office activities.  So it occurred to me that daycare puts out different activities each day - choice time.  We didn't have the luxury of planning that element of our days with the kids so I thought, "How about putting sets of toys in several boxes?"  So I proceeded to divide and place the toys in 6 different cardboard moving boxes and labeled each one by number.  A small investment, but what a pay off! 

As Saturday morning playtime came up, I laid out one box and explained that you could dump this out and play with these toys all you wanted, but when you wanted to play with other toys, you had to collect everything, place it back in the box, and I would take out the next box.  Needless to say, it made our lives so much easier.  The carpets were clear of toys and the kids had an incentive to play with what they had in each box.  They learned patience and the value of clean up time.  I didn't have to put together a day care curriculum, but could offer the kids enough to keep them interested. 

As the toy collection grew as they all do, the number of boxes increased.  Over time, as we were able to afford more, the cardboard boxes were replaced by clear tupperware containers of all sizes, but the system stayed the same.  So our younger son has the same relationship with his "boxes" as our older son did.  You may have heard this advice before, but I urge all of you suffering from cluttered, toy room boredom to adopt this system, now!