Toy Thursday: Toy Organization

Judah has been been in this habit lately of walking with his toys around the house. I find upstairs toys being carried downstairs and downstairs toys being carried upstairs. He wants a specific toy and so he goes to get it often bringing it to a different room. Then he puts it down forgetting about it until the next time he wants it.

The next time he wants the toy, he asks me where it is. I have been so busy doing chores that I am not sure where he took it, played with it, or put it down. We often end up going on a hunt around the house just for one specific toy. We find it, play with it, and then put it down as we go onto something else, thus forgetting about it again until the next time.

I run into the constant problem of hunting down toys which I neither have the patience nor time to do.

I understand and in fact encourage the need to play with all kinds of toys at the same time. Build a city with your blocks. Add your cars to drive around. Then build the train track. It makes sense for the need to be creative and resourceful.

I also understand the need to move toys around the house. In addition, I also realize the benefits of rotating toys not only from room to room but also what is available to play.For some reason creativity is sparked by changing venues. You can add a striped blanket from the living room for the roads. In the bedroom, the bed acts as the mountain for the city.

I am starting to realize the key is to picking up the toy when finished and putting it away in the appropriate place (room). Judah has this nice new toy bin with buckets for his blocks, cars, and trains among other toys. At first, the toys have been thrown in each bucket in any old way with some of all three in each bucket. This adds to the stress of finding a toy when desperately needed and relying on mom's help every time to come to the rescue.

While I continue to tell him to look in his toy bins, I have decided it is time to implement some further organization tips to make the search process run smoother.

When Judah opened his brand new toys from the boxes, I immediately cut off a picture of the toy from the leftover box. With high hopes I plan to tape the pictures of the blocks, cars, and trains to the corresponding bin that will house the toys from now on. Then when we pick up, we can be more mindful of matching the correct item into the box. Judah, himself, can look at the picture knowing what goes into that specific bin, aiding a faster search.

I hope this lessens the stress finding the toys. Now the next step is to figure out how not to walk with them around the house, leaving them in random places. Any ideas?