The Great Toy Purge of 2013

We had a bit of a crisis one evening last week.  One of our children is a bit of a pack rat.  Okay...so maybe more than a bit.  This kid collects all manner of trash and treasures to store in any container, bag, backpack, shelf, or corner that can be found.

If ever we are missing something we know where to go.  The problem is that we can never find what we're looking for until we deal with a mess like this...

And there are times when we have had enough and we insist on clearing out the entire room.

After a long talk one night, Claude and I decided that part of the problem is that this child has access to a lot of toys and other items.  Perhaps if there was less to gather less would be collected?  It was worth a try.

I've been wanting to clean out our toys for a while, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

So, after throwing away and giving away about half of the kids' toys here's what resulted.

Nearly all of our toys are in this part of the living room.

The boys' room now has beds, a tool bench, dress-up armor, Legos, individual keepsake bins, and clothing.

The girls' room has beds (yes, they are unmade...this is real life, folks!), a doll house and accessories, Legos, clothing, and individual keepsake bins.  Once Rachel moves in the empty wall will have a play yard.

This left some extra shelving and bins to clear out this:

Our school room shelves.

And this:

The reading corner minus half of the books that we once had there.

So that we could organize this:

The entryway closet now houses craft supplies, games, and other things we don't want the kids to have free access to.

And this:

No more folding the linens!  Now we can just toss linens into their labeled bins and be done.

Which gave some incentive to hang up these:

Now if we can just tackle this:

We'll be set!