Toy Library

Our children are so lucky to have such loving family members that rain gifts on them every year for Christmas and their birthdays. Since two out of our three children were born in December, our house turns into a Toys R Us look alike store complete with the all the empty boxes during that month. So this year we came up with the toy library to declutter, organize, and tame the wild toy chaos.

For a long time, my husband has been saying that we needed to go through all the toys. We kept the toys in little containers that were piled onto a built-in bookshelf in our living room. When new toys arrived, my husband and I would sneak some of the old toy containers to the basement to make room for the new. We have been doing this since my 5-year old was born. With the amount of toys that we had in our basement, I wasn't looking forward to this, so putting it off seemed like the thing to do.

My husband came up with the toy library idea, where we put shelving in an easily accessible place in our basement for our boys to keep all of their toys. Just like checking out a book at a library, they pick out a certain toy to play with, bring it upstairs, play, pick-up, return it to the basement shelf, and pick out a different toy.

My 5-year was trying to avoid napping, so he asked if he could "organize" the toys. I agreed, so he dumped all the containers of toys out on the living room floor and started sorting. All of the blocks together; all of the ninja turtles together; all of the animals together. This didn't last long before he asked to bring all the toys up from the basement. I must not have remembered all of our toys in the basement because I agreed. So our 5-year old carried little containers upstairs and opened all of them. By the time my 3-year woke up from napping, it was serious play time.

Eventually the boys helped catagorize and contain all of their toys, which are on shelves waiting to be played with. We set aside some of the bigger toys to be used as rewards, while we fixed, threw away, and donated others. Now our living isn't over run, and the boys are (Hopefully) never bored with their toys.