We all just worked our as#*s off to make Christmas magic for our kids. The shopping, the wrapping, the shopping, the cleaning, the decorating, the baking...all on top the 10 million things we do on a normal day. But we did it! Now we can sit back and bask in the glory of our accomplishment topped off by the sound of laughing and joyful children, or the intense sibling arguing over toys...it really could go either way. But lets get back to the basking in our accomplishment part. We're awesome aren't we?!
So while you're enjoying that nanosecond of Mom Accomplishment Time let me bring up the elephant in the room. Moms...because you rock...you now have way too many toys in your house!! I, like you, also have this issue so I went to the trusty internet and asked the magic Google bar "how to deal with too many toys in the house after Christmas". All the common sense articles came up with advice such as
- organize toys
- sort toys
- buy toy storage
- donate toys
- put toys away for later use or to place into a rotation
- throw away broken toys
Ok, we got it, but it's also a lot of work and takes a lot of time. So why not do it like those trendy HITs workouts? That's High Intensity Training where you workout for 20 minutes like a mad woman. But instead our HITs can be High Intensity Toy-purge (ok, I hyphenated toy-purge so the acronym would work :) So what I did was set plastic tubs in the playroom with the appropriate labels... storage, donate, trash. Then I created the motivation/bribery. I explained the objective of the mission and told the kids if they sorted and organized like Tasmanian Devils for 10 minutes then I'd take them to the movies that evening, including a stop by the Dollar Store for candy to sneak into the theater.
The deal was accepted, the timer was set and the flurry of properly motivated little kids was set into action. At the end of the 10 minutes to my amazement I saw an organized playroom and the toy purge complete. Was it perfect.. no, but it was good enough and that's what I wanted. The trash went out, the storage bin went up into a closet and the donate bin went out into the back of the van for me to drop off at a later time. Mission Accomplished in 10 minutes! Now I'm off to start dinner, throw in the laundry, clean up the cranberry sauce that spilled in the refrigerator, play Chutes and Ladders.......#momlife #loveit
Happy Holidays and visit me at kidscluttertamers.com
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