It's Time to Purge

I TRY to keep things simple.

OK, not everything, but somethings I try to keep simple.  For example, the girls have two pairs of shoes, sneakers and dress shoes.  That is it.  Please tell me I am not the only woman out there who doesn't care about shoes.  Oh well if I am, there I said it, I do not care about shoes, and if you had my feet you would likely not care either.  It is almost impossible to find shoes that fit my feet.  I have long, slender feet...I mean seriously the skinniest feet you have ever seen.  Like when I wear a pair of sneakers I have to lace them completely closed and sometimes my feet still swim around in them.  And trying to find dress shoes...ugh!

Yet that rant has nothing to do with what I am really concerned about as I type.  Truly my girls have two pair of shoes because I do not want to have to keep track of a bunch of things.  I want to be able to say, "Go put your shoes on" and know that they can go to the closet, find their shoes, put them on and go out the door.  I feel like the more shoes you have, the more complicated it gets.

I try to keep our toy situation simple.  I am trying to think of the last time I ever bought a toy for my children...hmmm...I cannot.  I am sure I have, but I sure cannot remember when or what it was.  We do not buy them Christmas or birthday gifts because they get plenty from the rest of our family, and we tend to like to give them experiences over things.  I'd rather take HC to see the Nutcracker than give her a toy that she will be done playing with in a year.

In light of the fact that we try to keep things simple I have no idea how our toy situation gets out of control.  All our toys live in the playroom.  Bedrooms are for sleeping, not playing, and thankfully we have the luxury of having some extra room/a dining room that has yet to be furnished, so we use that as our playroom.  Everything has its place.  We have a bucket for dress-up clothes, dolls and doll clothes, cars, little people, lincoln logs, play doh, stuffed animals, and puzzles.  We have a play kitchen with pots and pans, and we have an art table and some art supplies.  Why oh why is it that the room gets trashed everyday?  And my girls can clean it.  I help them, but they do a great job of cleaning it, but they also do a great job of wrecking it.

Sometimes I feel like they just go in there and dump things instead of actually playing with them.  So yesterday I told them we needed to purge.  I have been mulling some ideas around in my head and I am still trying to figure out what I will do.  I have thought about removing several buckets and then letting them trade out buckets from time to time.  You want to play cars?  Give me the doll bucket.  You want the dolls?  Give me the lincoln logs. etc.

The other idea is to truly have them go through their toys and decide what they want to give away to another child who doesn't have many toys.  We talked about this idea and HC was thrilled.  She asked me at dinner, "Mama, when will I be able to choose what to give to someone else?"  Sweet girl.

Before I decide what to do I need to call in my trusty mama counselors.  I am always interested in how other folks have handled these things.