I can't believe I'm posting this...

But I am doing the photo-a-day challenge... and this is my photo from today....

We're in post-holiday purge mode. We usually do this in October before Clara's birthday so the toys are cleaned out and organized before we hit the big influx of Clara's birthday and Christmas. However, this year, it just didn't happen. In our old house in Texas, it wasn't as crucial, we had a big huge playroom just for toys. Now, we're city dwellers with limited space.

So, a couple of months ago I read about Stephanie Vetne's experience with cleaning and organizing her children's rooms and decided to file that info away for when we did the big clean. Today we tried it out in the "kids room". First of all, everything came off the shelves and all of the bins of random stuffed were dumped in the floor. That was where we were when I took the picture above. Then came decision time. I sat in the floor and which each item, I called who it belonged to and asked if it was to stay or go. If it stayed... it had to be categorized. We told them that they could keep whatever they wanted but it needed to find a home. After everything was sorted as "stay" or "go" and categorized... we moved on to asking them which was their favorite thing to play with. Alex's was Legos and Clara claimed board games.... so Jeff went to work with Alex to find a location and system that worked best for him and his building... and Clara and I organized games. I think she worked out a good system... the ones they don't play very often went on the top shelf and those that they play more regularly went on the shelf below. We then put her Littlest Pet Shop stuff on a bottom shelf so she could easily pull it out, play with it and put it back. We had TONS of books on the bookshelf in the kids room... we cut those down to only one space worth. The rest went downstairs to the big bookcase we have in our spare bedroom since the kids do most of their reading downstairs.

When it was said and done... we had one black garbage bag full of trash (broken toys, missing pieces, art projects, etc.) and another full of stuff for Goodwill. Alex also decided to part with a great big bin of Rescue Heroes and Clara has decided to give away her My Little Ponies. Oh.... we also compromised and agreed to "keepsake" boxes for each of them (to be kept in the top of their closets)... a place for them to keep a few of those toys that they've outgrown but are still special to them (or possibly special to me that I can't bear for them to give away... just yet... LOL!).

I wish I had an after picture but we still have a little left to do.... maybe I'll take one tomorrow once we've gotten the garbage bags out of there and vacuumed.

Well... after all of that... I'm tired!! I'm heading to the couch!

'nite!!

PS.... don't forget, tomorrow is the last day to put your name in for the give-away!!!