making the switch

No, no, no, not that switch! We've been a Mac Family for years! LOL! I mean switching the toys around!

I have many of our toys split up into bins, some are rotate daily, some weekly, others monthly. This week-end I did the monthly switch. I have one very large bin that is for "living room toys" it contains books, toys to fill a basket, a couple toys for a shelf, and some of Miss J's baby doll toys. I have two sets of toys like this and we rotate them around every month. I do the same with the "baby" toys. It is a small bin that holds baby toys, books, and even stuffed animals that get split up between the two playpens and rotated every month also.

This month's group of toys for the basket has farm toys (that is just how it worked out, I realized we had a bunch of toys that fit together well when organizing this).

For the book shelf I just put a couple of toys on the top shelf and I rotate the books out too. This keeps the shelf from getting over loaded (and so easier for the kids to manage). The small basket holds the baby board books.

Miss J loves baby dolls and has quite a few and also quite a few gadgets to go with them. This months set up gives her her very own nursery! This picture also shows one of our two playpens, this one has "quiet" toys in it like books and soft animals, the other one is by the kitchen and has "activity" toys. There are toys that appeal to many different baby stages.

The result of doing this is that we have less clutter around the house, but all of our toys get played with! I've found that when the kids have access to all of their toys and books it just gets to be too much and they either get overwhelmed or board with the toys. By rotating them out

they have a bunch of new toys and books every month or so! The kids are excited to see their toys again, but don't mind when they are put back in the bin since they know they will see them again soon enough! This means that our toys are loved/enjoyed all the more, and our kids are happier and more content with the same old toys we've had around for quite a while!

Oh, and yes, the boys are wet in those pictures. They had just come in from doing bottle rockets with Rob outside and were quite pleased to see all the "new" toys and books!