toy rotation

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  • October 5, 2012 at 2:04 am
    bethanna
    Participant

    I remember some of you mentioning how you manage and rotate your children’s toys. How do you do this? My dc have been making tremendous messes every afternoon!

    October 5, 2012 at 3:15 pm
    mccormickmomma
    Member

    I keep all toys that belong to a set each in their own plastic tub (lincoln logs, blocks, trains, cars, etc) and then put them up in a closet and every few weeks we pull out different ones. 

    October 5, 2012 at 6:06 pm
    bethanna
    Participant

    We also store sets and similar things together, some not even in their bedrooms. Lincoln logs and legos stay in the dining room and are used during school times. And we’ve purged toys though I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to do more. What they have is open-ended, imaginative toys. The problem is that they get over-imaginative ? and pull out everything in their bedrooms (sometimes including shoes, bedding) to play fort/camping/whatever resulting in a huge mess and a highly aggravated mama! Dd7 is the main ring-leader so she and I had a BIG talk about this. But an ounce of prevention… I found a past post about making a “library” to check out toys and that might work, but I don’t know where to store them. I could probably give up a shelf in the laundry room. Any other toy management ideas?

    October 5, 2012 at 7:59 pm
    Tristan
    Participant

    We’ve done this for years. We put toys into rubbermaid tubs and stacked them on shelves in the kids’ closets, locking the doors. Once every week or so the kids could trade a tub for one from the closet. It worked well and gave us a very easy way to tell if there were toys nobody played with because those tubs never got pulled out to use. Those tubs of toys made their way to Goodwill.

    Recently we’ve purged even more toys than before and have a minumum in the house. With 7 children in two bedrooms it’s so important that we don’t overdo on having too many toys. They play more with each other than with the toys and so we’ve kept some much used toys and passed the rest to others. Some things we kept:

    – Legos

    – Wooden trains

    – A nice selection of dress up/theater clothes/props.

    – A selection of sturdy cars.

    – A selection of sturdy dolls.

    – Duplos (remember, I have lots of little ones!)

    My girls are almost 7 and 11 so they are doing more creating and less playing with toys. Their favorite things to do lately are beading, teaching themselves to knit, hand sewing, and cardmaking. They like dolls, trains, and legos for toys.

    My boys (ages almost 8, almost 5, 3, 1, and 8 mos) adore Legos, Duplos, trains, and cars between the five of them.

    All the children join together to make elaborate train routes and the girls then offer things they’ve made that the boys can deliver on the trains. They also love acting out books. Our current read aloud for book club is The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery – absolutely adorable! They’ve been inspired by Sarah Stanley to tell stories more than ever.

    I guess to sum up – less is better and focus on keeping toys that the child can use imaginatively.

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