Paring Down

We're at a point where simplifying routines and organization is a must.  I do not at all consider five children a large family, but we have reached a crossover point.  If God gives us more children we will not be able to get by as a normal-sized American family with normal-sized American family habits.  Even now, we're just barely eek by with our current ways of getting things done.

An area that we have been talking about changing is our toy usage and storage.  The house can become cluttered and messy in a hurry.  While we have times of day when we clean up, it is still more of a chore than I would like at the moment.  So, with a little bit of last minute motivation (namely our rental house being put up for sale and us being required to have it in "showing condition" 6 days a week) Claude and I spent one evening clearing things out, rearranging, and paring down.

I started the afternoon clearing out the clothing bins from here.

I quickly organized them by gender and size and moved them here with some help from the little Crew.

Then we moved nearly all of the toys here.  Do you recognize the messy closet from above?  :)

But left a few here.

 
And here:

We pared down the craft closet and made room for my sewing machine and fabric.

And finally moved the music area to our living room, which makes me feel like a grown-up.  I think we've had toys in our living room since Joshua was born nearly 7 years ago.

I'm not a fan of the house showing thing.  It's stressful and a bit frustrating.  On the bright side, however, our house is staying really clean and we got some desired streamlining finished (in a hurry)!

How do you keep the stuff in your life in check?