Tackling Toy Turmoil
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Homemaking on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 10:10 PM
I feel blessed because in our current house with our current sleeping situation, we’re able to have a play room.
It’s great having a room that’s completely dedicated to housing the toys. It makes tidying up easy, as I can just toss toys in there as I find them.
But I’m telling you, that room is a pit. Most of the time, it’s nearly impossible to walk across it without maiming yourself on a small piece of plastic.
(Perhaps this has something to do with my habit of tossing toys in there as I find them.)
“Pit” might be too strong a word. There is a place for everything in the play room, and a hard-working adult can take it from chaos to cleanliness in less than half an hour. (As long as he doesn’t have too much “help,” of course.)
About once a week, my husband and I get tired of the mess and one of us cleans it up. It’s both satisfying and frustrating. The play room looks so beautiful when it’s in order, but once the kids are up the next morning it turns into chaos again very quickly. Then I find myself, as usual, averting my gaze when I walk past.
A play room is a luxury, for sure. I appreciate it, but sometimes I wonder if it’s bad for me. My sister has no play room at her house, and she’s much more disciplined than I am about making her children clean up after themselves. She has to be, or she’d be treading on tiny trucks while cooking dinner every night. (More than she already does, I mean. She has two boys ages four and two, so her life is full of tiny trucks.)
Since I have the option of tossing toys in the play room and closing the door, I tend to do it on regular basis. I also, when we’re cleaning up the living room, tell the kids “just take all the toys to the play room” and leave it at that. And so there’s an entire room of our house that’s always messy.
And I wonder what solution will, in the long run, result in the most happiness and tranquility for our family. Do we take the path of least resistance, the one we’ve been taking, and let the room stay messy most of the time? I’d eventually like the children to take some responsibility for tidying the room, but should I try to build the task into our daily routine, or do a once-a-week “you can’t leave this room until it’s clean” deal like my mom did when I was a kid?
I think it’ll take some trial-and-error to find the best solution for our family, but I’m curious: does your family have a play room? Whether you do or not, how do you handle the kids-toys-mess situation?
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
