An Organized Toy System [Feature Friday #3 - A Joyous Journey]
  

An Organized Toy System [Feature Friday #3 - A Joyous Journey]

My friend Jenn has a blog that I love to read- not just because I know her and her family, but also because she writes about the little moments and experiences in parenthood that so many of us can relate to, as mothers, and I love the way that she puts it all into words.

So, today I want to feature Jenn's blog,
A Joyous Journey, but I'm doing so by having her post as my first guest blogger! Jenn shared with me an organizational system that she has come up with for her son's toys and daily routine, and I think it's great! I plan to find a way to implement this in our home, but until I do, I thought it would be great to let Jenn share the system with us as a guest blogger.


So, before I babble on too much, here's Jenn:


I had noticed that my two year old, Ben was enjoying dumping his toys out of their bins more than playing with them when he had full access to ALL his toys. As the first child and grandchild there was then, needless to say A LOT of toys to be dumped. The few moments it took him to empty the bins took me a lot longer to organize and clean up. I was sick of it!

I think I had been incorrect in assuming that he was old enough to appropriately self regulate himself in terms of activities throughout the morning as it seemed to include a lot of “dumping” and then he would be so overwhelmed with everything on the floor he wouldn’t play with anything.

I found success through desperation in putting all of his toys in his room, allowing one bin at a time to come into the playroom and allowing him to “trade” bins when he was done. I decided to take this a step further and take 5 large clear plastic bins to rotate so that there would be one bin of “new” toys each morning waiting for him. I tried to put one toy with lots of pieces in each bin so he could play with those toys without losing the pieces (and I could stop avoiding toys with more than two parts…)



When THIS proved also to be so successful, as I took his squealing with joy in the morning to the ring of “what I do today Mommy?!” I tried to make those bins a little more interesting by including special activities to do with Ben. With a new baby brother he was craving some Mommy time and this provided the perfect opportunity to give him this in a fun way as well as keep me motivated. I wrote different activity ideas out on index cards and allowed him to select one each morning for us to do together. Better yet we starting using these as collateral to get through his bedtime routine…when he has his jammies on, teeth brushed and lights off in his room he can pick the activity to look forward to the next morning!


You can find the images Jenn used for her routine chart here.

In terms of the activity cards some are classic ideas like play dough; stickers or colouring but then I looked to Heathers blog as a source of inspiration for some more creative ideas. Her ideas, reviews, suggestions and links to other similar sites have been an invaluable resource for me. Ben and I are enjoying our special time together and are looking forward to the time when Jacob is old enough to join us. Thank you Heather, for your inspiring and beautiful blog- we LOVE it!


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If you loved this guest post, please comment & let me know! And don't forget to check out Jenn's blog & tell her Heather sent you! :)

5 comments:

  1. heather lynne: what a great way to feature your friend by letting her guest blog.

    jenn: great read... also. dang. my family room has never looked like yours. and. last night. i stepped on yet another toy. *jealous*

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  2. What an awesome way to control the clutter and get to bed on a happy note. I'll have to go check out Jenn's blog too.

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  3. Awesome idea! I need to do this with a few of my bloggy friends.
    Thank you for stopping by my blog today. I love your blog & I love photography. I want to take a photography class and learn how to get the most out of my camera.
    I am off to read your blog. Thanks again!

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  4. Oh, that is so awesome! I really LOVE that idea, I have a list of activities to do, that I usually pick from, but what a clever idea and great way to keep it fun and organized.
    It's funny, because I actually just started up the same idea with feature Friday's. I call it FAB Friday's and today was my first one, haha, great minds think a like :)
    Well, I love your blog, this is totally the kind of stuff that I WANT to read. Thank you for visiting me, and I'll be back for sure!

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  5. This is SO AWESOME (channeling Rhino from Bolt if you know the movie) I can't wait to start a similar system for Jessie! Writing this as I abandoned all hope of finding family room floor tonight!

    I'm blog hopping this SITS Saturday --now Sunday :) because my Sweetie is away tonight. Thanks for a fun stop on my tour. I really like it here!
    Kathy over at Everyday Bliss
    http://blisspot.blogspot.com/

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Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment- I love reading them! :)
~Heather Lynne

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