I live in a small house and have two small boys, 4 and 2. I really think that I could get the 4 year old to keep his toys in order if it wasn’t for not-quite-2 year old brother instantly messing up everything.
This can hardly be an unusual situation. How have other parents dealt with it?
There really is a place for everything, but if EVERYTHING is out of place (all the pieces of all the puzzles, every lego, every crayon) it can be quite overwhelming–overwhelming to me much less a four year old. And it seems like things get that way FAST.
I bought some of those stackable drawers/containers for the kids rooms (Wal-Mart - $2-3 each) and, for my son, I keep all the legos in one, blocks in another, dinasaurs in another, smaller toys in one, etc. For my daughter’s containers… one has Barbies and clothes, another has all the little extras for her doll house, one has her tea set stuff, and she has a large plactic laundry basket for the bigger toys that won’t fit in the little drawers.
Puzzles can be stored individually in ziploc freezer bags. I use an empty diaper wipe container for crayons and another one for markers. I keep those containers and a large basket full of coloring books in the dining room so they can color when they want. (Washable crayons and markers of course!) I also have a big box in each of their rooms for their books.
I’ve made the kids help me pick up their toys since they were 2+ years old. Nothing too major. If they were coloring I’d have them put all the crayons in the box. If they were playing in their room I would have them bring me the toys and I’d put them in the appropriate container. I wouldn’t let them destroy their room/playroom and pick it up by myself though. That just teaches them that Mommy’s always gonna pick up after them… they learn that as young as 2!! Make a game out of them helping… they’ll think it’s fun. Sing a song while you do it… that works! Your 2 year old will always destroy whatever you’ve just picked up but they outgrow that… sort of… and your 4 year old really shouldn’t be expected to keep everything in it’s place at all times. But they can both help clean up whatever messes they make with their toys and it does get easier when they’re older. My kids are 6 and 4 now and they’re pretty good about putting stuff away.
What you do is you set up a spreadsheet for toy use. Everytime a toy is checked out and used, an entry should be made in the spreadsheet.
Be sure to catagorise toys by type, vendor, interactive or not, and size/color.
Use needs to be catagorised as well. Indoor/outdoor, game use or creative freelancing, end result, and breakage. Seperate columns for shared or used alone usage would be a good idea.
Each child should have their own password protected log on for the Toy Use spreadsheet program.
We had a toy chest, basically a big box, for our toys. It was big and low to the ground, so we could carry our toys over and drop them in ourselves. The rule at our house was that we had to ‘clean up’ our toys (meaning they end up in or on or near the toy chest) at the end of the day. When we got older, we advanced to a chest of drawers for the toys to be put away in. Basically, stuff was still a mess, but at least it wasn’t where the adults would fall on it.
The bedrooms each have only miminal toys and they are contained in one large rubbermaid bin thingie each. It is much easier than sorting it when in a rush and what fun it is for the kids to dump it every day to undone the tidiness.
The basement is the dedicated toy room. Where we have a toy closet (a very large storage room under the front porch) that is lockable. No toys can leave there without filling out paperwork in triplicate. Naturally, if mommie forgets to lock the door after getting out a couple of new toys and putting back the other toys,
well, hell, all bets are off. It’s like monkey’s at an all-you-can-eat banana buffett.
But, I like to cull the herd of toys once in awhile. The kids are elsewhere and I rush their toys with a garbage bag and tackle the loose bits and pieces and Dreaded McHappy Meal Toys and give them the heave ho. 99% of their toys are either garage sale ( excellent condition to start with) or gifts. So, pitching/charity, leaves no sticky guilt residue.
If you have the space, give the kids a toy room, but with specific rules so as to not give Mama a stroke over the clutter. Toy Explosions happen about every 3 minutes in the average house.
There are houses where the kids are programmed to put lego’s in with lego’s. Cars in with cars. Barbie never loses her shoes ( the tramp)…and I’m pretty sure that these kids are so repressed from a lack of ever cutting lose that it keeps the shrinks of the future very happy. These kids grow up to be emotionally constipated, I feel. In fact, I’m pretty sure that every freakin’ Parenting mag ‘control the clutter’ article is underwritten by the American Pyschological Association.
You say that you have a place for everything. Does that mean a shelf space, a box? Having an actual container for each item (as stated above) seems to work best for us. We didn’t go with identical plastic containers, as then the non-reading child doesn’t know what goes where. (Although I suppose that you could put pictures on them. ) We use a variety of baskets for small toys, large plastic totes for balls and stuffed animals, etc.
I know what you mean about how fast rooms can get trashed. We have a 5, almost 3, and barely 1 year old. We started from about just over 2 with having them help clean up. Generally when it was REALLY messy, Mom or Dad got things started by deciding to pick up the blocks (for example) first. Got the kids involved in a baketball game with the blocks and the basket while we helped slightly. Then on to the balls, etc. One item at a time, easy ones first, Dad helping anywhere from just enough to keep them going to Dad doing almost all the work and getting just token help from kids. Having the positively identifiable containers was a great help in the getting started part.
For first kid, if she cooperated and helped (90+% of time) all was well. If she didn’t cooperate, we reached a point where any toys Dad had to pick up went “up high” for 2 days. We were consistent and this actually worked. Have not done this much now with multiple kids as at least one of them picks up the slack, they both play with same toys, and I hate to punish both if just one is being difficult.
OK, so that really didn’t answer your question, but it let me brag. Sorry about that. 4 and not quite 2?
Suggestion #1 Try to keep the toes/baskets/ boxes out of reach of the toddler. Will drive him insane, but if you can fill up a basket, put it out of reach, then on to the next, the room gets clean pretty fast.
Suggestion #2. Watch Barney and make sure they learn the “Clean up” song. seriously. It helped us immensely. Just singing that song got the oldest in the mood to clean up. Also “The Big Comfy Couch” TV show has a “10 second tidy”. Both older kids saw that and learned from it. TV. It’s not all that bad in moderation.
Suggestion #3- Minimize number of toys available to be taken out. Keep rest of toys in a closet and rotate the toys that are avalable.
Suggestion #4- Curl up in corner and wait for youngest to get 3 or 4 months older.
(I am currently making heavy use of option #4 with my 1 year old who has decided oud high pitched shrieks are the best way to get more Cheerios.)
How do you feel that putting cars in with cars leads to emotional constipation? Do you think that it is too hard for kids to match things?
Programmed? You mean that teaching them how to put things away is some form of brainwashing? Mine like the game of putting things in the right spot, and then… magically … being able to find them again!
When we are in a hurry the grownup makes the call to not clean up that evening, so we don’t worry that it is slightly slower to clean up with multiple containers.
Kids can find plenty of ways to cut loose that have nothing to do with putting Legos in the Hotwheel box.
Honestly, I think mess is only overwhelming for a 4 y.o. if they’re expected to deal with it beyond their ability. Four might be a bit young although some will be more capable than others, of course. You’ll know when it gets to be too much for him.
Any type of container or whatever you have will do. (Throw out anything broken or junky, be ruthless about that) I just kept trying to teach them by example and repetition, just like everything else. You know, the old “put it away when you’re finished with it, before you take anything else out” routine. Just demonstrate and repeat, and repeat, etc. (For years and years if necessary snort) Don’t get stressed over it whatever you do. You’ve no doubt already noticed that the more stressful anything is for you, the more it is for them, too. Pick your battles, it’s only a toy room.
When my kids were your guys’ ages, I tried to have low-to-no expectations and just sort of verbally encouraged them to help me while I was doing it. Sometimes they helped better than others. Some nights we just left it all out since they were going to make the same mess the next day. You just have to accept more mess when you have really young kids. It’s not fair to yourself or to them to have too high a standard for that when they’re this young. As long as it gets cleaned & tidied regularly enough and there’s no food mess in there, a messy toy room is no big deal, IMO.
Anyhow, my boys eventually asked me for extra containers so they could find their Lego parts more easily. (Yay, Lego! I think the oldest was 8 or 9 at the time) They figured out for themselves that they could have more play time if they were better organized. This sort of slowly translated into all their other stuff, IIRC. They also learned to take care of their toys (which they still don’t do perfectly anyhow) when stuff they really liked got broken or lost or whatever.
They’re teenagers now, but believe me, they still need to be told to clean up sometimes. I think the needing to be told thing goes on until they move out, actually. laughs
Well what my mom did was put up shelves everywhere we could reach and drew a picture of the toy and the name of the toy. It was nice.
Beyond that it was all about the big plastic boxes. My mother eventually confessed that any time there were more toys than toybox, she would give away things we weren’t seen playing with. I certainly never noticed. I also remember that dominoes and lego were kept in the kitchen and we had to ask for them. Now that I think about it. My mother was an elementary school teacher so I guess she used the tricks of the trade on us.